DAD  ANT  SYSTEM 

OF 

BEEKEEPING 


C.  P.  DAD  ANT 


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DADANT  SYSTEM  OF  BEEKEEPING 


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The  Dadant  System 
of  Beekeeping 


Copyright,  1920, 
By  C.  P.  Dadant 


tJSPP- 


Charles  Dadant 


Dadant  System  of 
Beekeeping 


BY 

C.  P.  DADANT 

EDITOR  OF  THE  AMERICAN  REE  JOURNAL, 
REVISER  OF  "THE  HONEY  REE,"  AUTHOR 
OF  "FIRST  LESSONS  IN  REEKEEPING,"  ETC. 


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AMERICAN   BEE  JOURNAL 
HAMILTON,  ILLINOIS 

1920 


Chapter  1 


Chapter 


Chapter  3. 

Chapter  4. 

Chapter  5. 

Chapter  6. 

Chapter  7. 


Chapter  S. 


Chapter  9. 


Chapter  10. 
Chapter  11. 
Chapter  12. 


Chapter  13. 
Chapter  14. 


CONTENTS 

:   .  Page 

Early  experiments — Natural  History.  1 

The  Queen 5 

The  worker-bee 6 

Size  of  Hives.  9 

The  large  hive 10 

Small  hives 14 

Safety  in  wintering 20 

Frame  spacing 21 

The  supers 23 

Side  storage 26 

Queen  excluders 26 

Drones  and  Drone  Production.  29 

The  Dadant  Hive 35 

A  simplified  Dadant  hive 42 

Hive  making - 46 

Handling  Bees.  47 

Our  Apiaries.  49 

Outapiaries 52 

Apiary  Management.  55 

Spring 56 

The  honey  crop 57 

Increase 57 

Queens  for  increase 58 

Swarm  Prevention  and  Supering.  65 

Prevention  of  natural  swarming 65 

Putting  on  supers 72 

Extracting.  75 

Extracting  implements 80 

Robbing...- S5 

Varying  honey  crops 87 

Requeening 88 

Queen  Introduction 89 

Nomadic  Beekeeping.  91 

Fall  Management.  97 

Wintering.  99 

Cellar  wintering 100 

Our  house  cellar 101 

Wintering  in  clamps 102 

Wintering  out-of-doors 102 

Diseases  of  Bees.  107 

Enemies  of  Bees.  113 


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ILLUSTRATIONS 

Charles   Dadant Frontispiece 

Moses  Quinby Fig.     1 

L.  L.  Langstroth,  inventor  of  the  movable  frame  hive Fig.    2 

C.  P.  Dadant,  sons  and  son-in-law Fig.    3 

Head  of  Queen Fig.    4 

I  [ead  of  worker Fig.    5 

Frames  of  Langstroth  and  Dadant-Quinby  size Fig.    6 

Twenty-frame  Dadant  hive  tried  by  Charles  Dadant Fig.    7 

Coffin-shaped  frames  tried  by  the  senior  Dadant Fig.    8 

Eight-frame  Langstroth  and  Dadant  hive  side  by  side Fig.    9 

Several  stories  of  eight-frame  hives  make  too  tall  a  pile Fig.  10 

Shallow  brood-chambers,  same  depth  as  supers Fig.  1 1 

Ekes  or  nadirs  of  by-gone  days Fig.  12 

The  DeLayens  long  idea  hive Fig.  13 

A  regularly  laid  and  well  filled  comb  of  worker  brood Fig.  14 

Comparison  of  Langstroth  and  Dadant  Supers Fig.  15 

Queen  excluders  exclude  ventilation  and  free  access  to  supers Fig.  16 

Modern  excluders  are  better  than  the  old,  but  are  still  in  the  way 

of  the  bees - -Fig.  17 

Comb  built  without  foundation  or  with  only  a  small  starter Fig.  18 

The  drone  trap  should  not  be  used  except  in  rare  instances Fig.  19 

Detailed  cross-section  of  original  Dadant  hive Fig.  20 

Details  of  underside  of  Dadant  hive Fig.  21 

Dadant  hive  open Fig.  22 

The  division  board  of  the  Dadant  hive Fig.  23 

The  story  and  a  half  Modified  Dadant  hive Fig.  24 

Frames  of  the  Modified  Dadant  hive  are  the  same  length  as 

those  of  Langstroth   hive Fig.  25 

The  Modified  Dadant  hive  has  a  40  per  cent  larger  brood  comb  area 

than  the  10-frame  Langstroth Fig.  26 

The  Modified  Dadant  hive  is  equipped  with  metal  cover  and  re- 
versible bottom Fig.  27 

The  body  is  dovetailed  and  has  1 1  Hoffman  frames Fig.  28 

The  regular  Langstroth  body  may  be  used  as  a  super Fig.  29 

Home  apiary,  where  we  kept  bees  over  55  years Fig.  30 

A  Dadant  outyard.    The  Poland  apiary Fig.  31 

Another  Dadant  outyard,  the  Holland  apiary Fig.  32 

The  LeMaire  apiary  of  the  Dadant  outyard  system Fig.  33 

The  Milliken  outyard  of  the  Dadant  system Fig.  34 

The  Koch  apiary  of  the  Dadant  system Fig.  35 

Another  Dadant  outapiary  on  the  edge  of  the  bluff Fig.  36 

ix 


x  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Queen  cells  hang  downward Fig.  37 

A  small  colony  is  confined  to  such  space  as  it  can  cover,  by  use  of  the 

division  board Fig.  38 

Supers  set  back  for  ventilation  in  hot  weather Fig.  39 

The  bee-escape  board  lends  itself  to  modern  honey  production Fig.  40 

Using  mud  to  close  gap  between  stories  by  hive  tool Fig.  41 

Method  of  lifting  supers  to  put  on  escape  board Fig.  42 

First  honey-extractor  of  Hruschka Fig.  43 

The  first  extractor  made  in  the  United  States Fig.  44 

Uncapping  at  a  single  stroke  of  the  knife Fig.  45 

Robber  cloth  and  pan  protect  supers  from  robbers  duringextracting..Fig.  46 

The  original  cappingcan  is  still  in  usa  in  the  Dadant  apiaries Fig.  47 

Supers  returned  to  the  hives  after  the  last  extracting  of  the  year Fig.  48 

Super  combs  which  have  been  in  use  over  fifty  years,  and  are  fully 

as  good  as  at  first Fig.  49 

The  Mississippi  bottoms  viewed  from  the  Koch  apiary  on  the  bluff  -Fig.  50 

Chart  of  the  Dadant  apiaries  in  1880 Fig.  51 

Map  of  the  Dadant  apiaries  in  1919 Fig.  52 

Moving  bees  on  auto  trucks. Fig.  53 

Closing  brood-chambers  with  screens  for  hauling  in  hot  weather Fig.  54 

Hives  packed  for  winter  out-of-doors ...Fig.  55 

A  three-colony  winter-case Fig.  56 

Gas  torch  for  singeing  hives  that  have  contained   American   foul- 
brood Fig.  57 

Low,  moist,  rich  bottom  land  that  is  good  fcr  honey  production Fig.  58 


The  Dadant  System  of 
Beekeeping 

CHAPTER  I 

Early  Experiments.— Natural  History 

In  writing  a  book,  it  is  customary  to  begin  with  a  pre- 
face, which  very  few  people  read.    We  want  the  student  to  read 


Moses  Quixby 
Originator  of  the  frame  which  the   Dadants  adopted. 

this  as  well  as  the  rest  of  the  book,  in  order  to  secure  an  idea  of 
the  "why"  of  the  system  that  the  writer  develops  in  the  en- 
suing pages. 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPIXd 


1 

.     . 

jf  - 

\ 

& 

L.  L.  Langstroth 
The  inventor  of  the  movable-frame  hive 


The  senior  Dadant,  Charles  Dadant,  emigrated  to  America 
from  France  in  1863.  He  had  kept  bees  as  a  pastime  in  Europe. 
He  was  very  fond  of  bees,  ever  since  his  youth  and  had  already 
experimented  on  different  styles  cf  bee  hives.  In  the  early  issues 
of  the  American  Bee  Journal,  especially  in  Volume  III,  in 
1868,  he  told  his  beginnings  in  apiculture. 

In  1864,  located  upon  a  small  brush  farm,  two  miles  north 
of  Hamilton,  Illinois,  he  secured  two  colonies  of  common  black 
bees  in  box  hives.  From  these  two  colonies  came  the  establish- 
ment which  is  now  supporting  a  number  of  families  and  has  made 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


C.  P.  Dad  A  NT,  sons,  a\d  son-in-law 
From  left  to  right — L.  G.  Saugier,  M.  G.  Dadant,  C.  P.  Dadant,  H.  C. 
Dadant  and  L.  C.  Dadant 


them  pecuniarily  independent.  Mr.  Dadant  often  said  that 
those  bees  always  paid,  beforehand,  in  product,  for  all  expenses 
put  in  their  management  and  in  numerous  improvements. 

After  experimenting  upon  divers  Old  World  methods  of 
beekeeping,  he  read  in  a  magazine,  of  the  success  of  Moses 
Quinby,  of  New  York  State,  bought  his  book  "The  Mysteries 
of  Beekeeping"  and  later  "The  Hive  &  Honey  Bee"  of  Lang- 
stroth, which  he  was  to  revise,  20  years  later,  at  the  request 
of  the  author.  In  a  very  short  time  he  became  convinced 
that  the  Langstroth  system  was  ahead  of  anything  yet  devised; 
that  the  movable-frame  hive  principle  was  the  key  of  successful 
beekeeping;  because  of  the  perfect  control  which  it  gives  the 
beekeeper  over  the  bees  and  the  combs. 
The  difference  between  the  Langstroth  and  the  Quinby  methods 


4  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     DEEKEEPIXG 

resided  only  in  the  dimensions  of  the  hives  ana  of  the  frames; 
Quinby  having  adopted  the  Langstroth  invention  of  movable- 
frames,  but  adapting  it  to  frames  and  hives  of  a  different  ^ize. 
This  invention  consists  in  hives  containing  frames  of  comb  with 
a  bee-space  between  the  ends,  tops  and  bottoms  of  the  frames 
and  the  body  of  the  hive,  opening  at  the  top. 

The  writer,  son  of  Charles  Dadant,  was  initiated  in  the 
main  secrets  of  the  bee  hive  at  the  age  of  14  but  did  not  become 
an  active  apiarist  till  the  age  of  18. 

He  was  very  timid  with  bees,  being  afraid  of  their  stings. 
It  was  not  until  a  very  prosperous  season  for  honey  production 
when,  his  father  being  laid  up  with  hay  fever,  he  felt  compelled 
to  look  after  the  bees.  Finding  the  hives  full  of  honey  and  the 
bees  working  eagerly  in  empty  supers  and  filling  them  with 
beautiful  white  combs,  his  enthusiasm  got  the  better  of  his 
fear  of  stings  and  he  became  a  bee  lover  henceforth. 

The  senior  Dadant  was  fond  of  experiments.  So  he  tried 
not  only  the  Langstroth  and  Quinby  styles  of  hives,  but  a  number 
of  other  styles,  and  in  1868  had  a  few  hives  in  square  frames 
12"xl3",  which  he  liked  well  enough  to  recommend  them  in  a 
little  book,  "Petit  Cours  D' Apiculture"  published,  in  the 
French  language  in  1874,  for  the  benefit  of  his  native  country. 
After  trying  them  for  30  odd  years,  side  by  side  with  largely 
increasing  numbers  of  both  Quinby  and  Langstroth  hives,  we 
finally  adopted  the  Quinby  size  of  frames,  adding  to  the  number 
of  frames  from  the  original  eight,  recommended  by  Quinby, 
to  9  and  10.  Why  did  we  find  the  Quinby  frame  preferable? 
Because  it  is  a  little  over  two  inches  deeper  than  the  standard 
Langstroth  frame,  contains  more  surface  of  comb,  and  supplies 
more  honey  over  the  cluster  for  winter. 

Although  we  do  not  propose,  in  this  book,  to  describe  at 
length  the  natural  history  of  the  honeybee  which  is  given  in 
more  or  less  detail  in  both  of  our  published  works,  "The  Hive  & 
Honey  Bee"  and  "First  Lessons  in  Beekeeping,"  it  is  necessary 
to  explain  some  of  the  characteristics  of  the  queens,  workers 
and  drones  in  order  to  indicate  the  requirements  that  bring 
about  the  greatest  success. 


DAD  ANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


The  Queen 

The  queen,  the  mother-bee,  is  fertilized  for  life,  at  the  age 
of  about  6  to  10  days,  in  normal  circumstances.  She  is  then 
fitted  for  a  life's  production  of  bees.  Her  greatest  laying  comes 
at  the  opening  of  spring,  when  it  is  necessary  to  rear,  for  the 
honey  harvest,  a  large  number  of  worker-bees.  Early  writers 
assured  their  readers  that  a 
good  queen  could  lay  from  200 
to  500  eggs  per  day,  and  they 
perhaps  wondered  whether  the 
reader  would  believe  this  as- 
sertion. But  when  the  inven- 
tion of  movable-frame  hives 
enabled  the  beekeeper  to 
study  the  innermost  secrets 
of  the  bee-hive,  it  was  found  Fig.4.  Head  of  the  Queen  (magnified) 
that  queens  of  good  quality 

(and  we  should  have  no  others)  could  lay  more  than  3,000  eggs 
per  day,  for  weeks  and  months  together.  This  was  asserted 
first  by  Langstroth  and  Quinby.  Mr.  Langstroth  stated  that 
he  had  seen  a  queen  lay,  in  an  observing  hive,  at  the  rate  of 
six  eggs  per  minute.  We  witnessed  a  similar  performance 
ourselves.  It  is  not  necessary  that  a  queen  should  lay  eggs  at 
that  speed  in  order  to  prove  very  prolific,  since  a  ten  hour  day 
of  egg-laying  would  produce  3600  eggs. 

Doolittle,  one  of  the  bright  lights  of  beekeeping,  from  1870 
to  1918,  asserted  that  he  had  had  queens  that  laid  as  many  as 
5,000  eggs  in  24  hours,  for  weeks  in  succession.  There  is  a  way 
by  which  any  one,  who  owns  bees  in  movable-frame  hives,  may 
ascertain  how  many  eggs  are  laid  by  a  prolific  queen,  without 
being  compelled  to  watch  her  performances.  It  takes  21  days  to 
carry  the  newly  laid  egg,  intended  for  a  worker-bee,  through  the 
different  stages  of  metamorphosis,  to  the  perfect  insect  with 
wings  which  cuts  itself  out  of  the  sealed  cell.  So  if  we  count  the 
number  of  cells  containing  brood  and  eggs,  during  the  height  of 
the  breeding  season,  if  the  hive  be  large  enough  and  the  queen 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


sufficiently  prolific,  we  will  ascertain  that  many  queens  can  and  do 
lay  3,500  and  even  more  eggs  per  day,  for  a  number  of  weeks. 
To  count  the  number  of  cells  it  is  only  necessary  to  measure  the 
number  of  square  inches  of  brood  surface,  remembering  that 
each  square  inch  represents  between  27  and  28  workers. 

This  heavy  brood  laying  lasts  only  during  the  spring  and 
early  summer  months,  of  course.  In  the  fall  the  laying  is 
reduced  and  in  the  winter  it  ceases. 

It  is  important  that  we  should  enable  the  queen  to  lay 
to  the  utmost  of  her  capacity  for  the  time  when  her  bees,  or  the 
bees  hatching  from  her  eggs,  will  be  able  to  harvest  a  crop. 
Like  a  good  general,  we  must  marshal  our  forces  for  the  battle 
neither  too  early,  nor  too  late.  With  bees,  it  is  more  important 
than  with  men,  because  bees  have  but  a  very  limited  time  of 
usefulness.  In  order  to  illustrate  this,  it  is  necessary  to  say  a 
few  words  about  the 

Worker-Bee 

The  worker-bee  is  an  undeveloped  female.  Had  the  young 
female  larva,  when  hatching,  been  fed  with  milky  pap  during  the 

whole  time  of  her  existence 
as  larva,  and  had  she  been 
placed  in  a  spacious  queen- 
cell,  she  would  have  been  a 
queen.  But  only  one  queen 
is  needed  in  a  hive.  So 
the  female  larvae,  and  the 
drone  larvae  as  well,  are 
hatched  in  small  cells  and 
fed  with  the  milky  pap,  or 
royal  jelly,  during  only  the 
first  three  days  of  life;  after 
that  time,  the  food  is  coarser 
and  composed  of  pollen,  or 
bee-bread  as  it  is  often  called,  and  honey.  The  result  is  an 
entirely  different  being  from  what  it  would  have  been  as  a 
fully  developed  insect: 


Fig.   5. 


Head    of    the   worker    bee 
(magnified) 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  7 

1.  The  worker  has  no  egg  sacks  or  ovaries;  at  least  such 
ovaries  as  she  may  have  are  unable  to  produce  eggs  in  ordinary 
circumstances  and  never  more  than  a  few  eggs  at  best. 

2.  Her  head  is  shaped  differently,  her  jaws  more  power- 
ful, her  antennae  rise  up  in  the  air  at  the  least  disturbance, 
she  has  salivary  glands  which  do  not  exist  or  are  very  imperfect 
in  the  queen  and  the  drone,  she  has  wax-producing  organs 
which  exist  in  neither  of  the  others;  on  her  hind  legs  are  brushes 
and  baskets  to  gather  and  carry  pollen,  which  are  entirely 
absent  in  queen  or  drones. 

3.  She  is  of  a  determined  disposition,  flying  at  an  intruder 
without  fear,  when  irritated,  while  the  queen  runs  and  hides 
from  view.  Her  sting  is  straight  instead  of  being  curved  like 
that  of  the  queen.  She  goes  about  in  search  of  honey  and  pollen, 
takes  care  of  the  brood  and  does  all  the  domestic  service  of  the 
home. 

4.  She  has  great  reverence  for  the  queen-mother,  while 
the  queen  herself,  if  any  rivals  are  about,  seeks  to  destroy  them. 

The  worker  bees  hatch  from  the  egg  in  21  days,  in  ordinary 
circumstances.  They  do  duty  about  the  inside  for  a  week,  before 
attempting  a  flight  outside.  About  the  seventh  day,  in  the  after- 
noon, they  take  their  first  flight,  coming  back  home  after  having 
made  the  acquaintance  of  the  surroundings,  and  remaining 
another  week  indoors.  It  is  therefore  only  after  2  weeks  of 
insect  life,  5  wreeks  from  the  laying  of  the  egg,  that  the  worker 
becomes  a  field  bee  and  begins  to  harvest  honey.  This  is  im- 
portant to  know,  if  we  wish  to  get  our  force  of  honey  harvesters 
at  the  right  time. 

The  worker  does  not  live  long  in  the  busy  season.  Previous 
to  the  introduction  of  the  Italian  bee  in  apiaries  of  common 
bees,  it  was  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  ascertain  how  long  a 
worker  lives.  The  introduction  of  Italian  bees  has  helped  solve 
this  problem  in  a  positive  manner. 

If  you  introduce  an  Italian  queen  in  a  colony  of  common 
or  black  bees,  say  on  the  first  of  May,  after  having  killed  its 
black  queen,  there  will  not  be  a  single  black  bee  left  in  that  hive 


8  DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPIXd 

on  the  first  of  August,  3  months  (90  days)  later.  When  you 
killed  the  black  queen,  there  were  eggs  freshly  laid  in  the  cells. 
Those  eggs  have  required  21  days  to  hatch.  So  in  71  to  72  days 
from  the  hatching  of  the  last  eggs,  the  black  bees  have  disap- 
peared, showing  an  average  of  36  days  for  the  life  of  a  worker-bee 
in  summer.  During  the  fall  and  winter  their  life  is  longer,  for 
they  do  not  wear  themselves  out  then  with  hard  work,  as  they 
do  in  summer. 

We  must  compute  the  time  when  the  marshalling  of  our 
army  of  bees  will  be  needed,  by  the  crops  of  the  country  in  which 
we  live.  W7e  must  rear  our  bees  to  work  upon  the  bloom  of 
either  clover,  alfalfa,  basswood,  sage,  heather,  mesquite,  pal- 
metto, gallberry,  buckwheat,  Spanish  needle  or  bidens,  etc., 
as  the  case  may  be.  The  strength  of  the  colony  must  come  for 
the  opening  of  those  crops;  for  the  general  who  brings  his  soldiers 
too  late  upon  the  battlefield  will  lose  the  battle. 

In  other  words,  to  use  a  most  forcible  expression,  from  one 
of  our  best  teachers  among  the  bee  educators,  Mr.  Geo.  S. 
Demuth,  we  must  rear  our  working  force  of  bees  for  the  honey 
crop  and  not  upon  the  honey-crop.  The  secret  of  success  is  all 
there. 

However  it  is  very  clear  that  we  cannot  have  a  full  force 
of  bees,  if  the  capacity  of  the  brood  chamber  is  inadequate  to 
supply  breeding  space  for  our  most  prolific  queens.  The  queens 
must  not  be  cramped  for  room  to  lay,  at  the  time  when  bees 
are  most  needed. 


CHAPTER  II. 

Size  of  Hives 

The  Quinby  "hives  originally  made  by  Moses  Quinby  and 
first  adopted  by  us  contained  8  frames  measuring  10^x18 
inches  inside.    The  Langstroth  hives  of  standard  size  contained 


Fig.  6.    Frames  of  Langstroth  size  and  of  Quinby- Dadant  size 

10  frames,  measuring  8x16^  inches  inside.  The  former  hive 
had  therefore  a  capacity  of  92  square  inches  of  comb  over  the 
latter.  We  found  both  too  small,  for  when  we  placed  supers  with. 

0 


10 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


combs  over  those  hives,  in  the  spring,  the  queens  would  go  up 
into  those  supers  and  lay  eggs,  after  they  had  filled  the  lower 
story.  Mr.  Dadant  senior  then  tried  Quinby  hives  of  different 
capicities,  up  to  20  frames  of  comb,  or  with  a  capacity  of  3780, 
square  inches  of  comb.     These  were  too  large  by  all  means, 


Fig.  7.    Twenty  frame  Dadant  hive  tried  by  Charles  Dadant 


and  although  we  used  some  40  of  them  for  several  years,  we 
could  only  produce  honey  on  what  was  later  called  "the  long 
idea,'  that  is  to  say  we  had  both  brood  and  surplus  honey  in 
the  same  apartment.  Although  the  colony  usually  occupied 
one  side  of  the  hive  with  brood,  the  queen  often  roamed  from 
one  end  of  the  hive  to  the  other  and  honey  sometimes  had  to  be 
extracted  from  combs  containing  brood,  a  very  undesirable 
arrangement. 

To  give  the  reader  an  idea  of  the  number  of  hive  ex- 
periments made  by  the  senior  Dadant,  we  will  say  that  he 
tried  hives  with  frames  18x18  inches,  looking  like  regular  barns. 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  11 


Fig.  8.     Coffin-shaped  frames  tried  by  the  senior  Dadant  to  obtain  the 
nearest  to  a  sphere 

These  combs  proved  too  large;  they  would  break  down  readily 
in  hot  weather.  He  also  tried  hives  with  frames  in  the  shape 
of  a  coffin,  because  he  had  noticed  that  bees  rear  their  brood  and 
cluster  themselves  in  as  near  a  round  shape  as  possible.  The 
coffin  shaped  frame  was  the  nearest  possible  to  a  circle  in  a  hive 
made  of  lumber.  The  bees  thrived  in  them.  But  the  difficulty 
was  in  placing  supers  on  those  hives.  After  a  few  years  of  trial 
they  were  discarded  also. 

After  a  number  of  similar  experiments,  Dadant  senior 
finally  adopted  a  Quinby  hive  of  11  frame  capacity,  reducing 
it  to  10  or  to  9  frames  or  even  to  a  less  number  for  small 
swarms,  with  one  or  two  division  boards. 


12 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEKEEEPIXG 


The  ten-frame  Quinby  brood  chamber  which  is  now  called 
the  "Dadant  hive, "contains  1890  square  inches  of  comb  or 
540  square  inches  more  than  the  10-frame  Langstroth.  That 
this  brood  chamber  is  sufficient  and  the  10-frame  Lang- 
stroth insufficient,  for  the  average  prolific  queen,  in  spring, 
was  ascertained  positively  by  us  when,  about  1876,  we  handled 
several  hundred  of  these  hives  under  exactly  the  same  manage- 
ment, side  by  side  with  110  10-frame  Langstroth  hives,  which 
we   had   leased   for   honey   production   from   an   old    Missouri 


Fig.  9.    Eight-frame  Langstroth  hive  and  Dadant  hive  side  by  side 


beekeeper  by  the  name  of  Barlow.  During  the  month  of  May 
quite  a  number  of  the  Langstroth  colonies,  having  been  given 
supers  of  built  combs,  began  to  breed  in  those  supers, 
while  none  of  the  queens  in  the  Quinby-Dadant  hives  occu- 
pied the  supers.     This  was   clear  evidence   that   it   took  more 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     CE     EEEKEEPIXG  13 

than  one  story  of  Langstroth  ten  frame  size  to  supply  a  good 
queen  with  sufficient  breeding  room,  at  the  time  when  we  must 
marshal  our  forces  for  the  harvest. 

Additional  evidences  of  the  superiority  of  a  large  brood 
chamber  were  plentiful  when  the  results  were  weighed.  Aside 
from  the  fact  that  numerous  old  time  beekeepers  sang  the  praise 
of  large  hives,  even  when  only  logs  or  boxes,  we  found  that  the 
increased  population,  from  ample  breeding  room  given  to  the 
queen,  unhampered  by  divisions  or  spaces,  secured  a  much 
increased  harvest.  Perhaps  the  most  cogent  evidence  that  we 
can  cite  is  the  opinion  of  a  farmer's  wife  on  whose  farm  we  had 
located  an  apiary  composed  of  both  Dadant  large  hives  and 
ordinary  Langstroth  hives  in  about  equal  number,  managed  in 
the  same  manner.  We  were  paying  these  people  for  the  rental  of 
the  apiary  site,  in  a  share  of  the  crop.  The  lady,  who  was  a  very 
keen  manager,  asked  us  one  day  why  we  had  brought  any  small 
hives  to  their  farm;  why  we  did  nor  keep  those  hives  at  home. 
She  did  not  think  we  treated  them  fairly,  for  she  could  very 
plainly  see  that  the  large  crops  came  from  the  large  hives  and 
she  gave  us  to  understand  that  she  objected  strenuously  to  our 
keeping  an  apiary  at  their  farm  in  future,  unless  we  kept  only 
large  hives  there.  Although  we  had  seen  for  ourselves  the  ad- 
vantages of  large  brood-chambers,  nothing  brought  the  matter 
to   our   notice   more   forcibly   than   this   avaricious   complaint. 

However,  it  was  necessary  for  us  to  keep  some  bees  in  standard 
Langstroth  hives,  for  very  few  people  have,  until  lately,  been 
willing  to  buy  bees  in  such  large  brood  chambers  as  we  use. 
And  yet,  for  success,  especially  in  running  for  extracted  honey, 
there  is  no  comparison  in  results. 

It  is  true  that,  with  Langstroth  hives  of  the  standard  size, 
one  may  use  a  story-and-a-half  or  two  stories,  for  brood.  But 
here  we  found  objections.  When  the  queens  ascend  from  one 
story  to  another,  compelled  by  necessity,  to  find  room  to  lay, 
they  hesitate  in  turning  back.  We  have  seen  and  have  often 
had  reports  of  queens  laying  in  three  stories,  so  that  their 
brood  was  scattered  everywhere  in  those  stories.  So  the  using 
of  a  small  hive,  to  be  made  larger  by  doubling  it,  is  only  using  a 


14  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

more  or  less  inconvenient  large  hive.  An  8-frame  Langstroth 
hive  is  too  small.  An  8-frame  Langstroth  hive,  doubled  to  16- 
frames,  is  too  large.  One  may  do  as  our  venerable  and  most 
practical  friend,  Dr.  Miller  did,  reduce  the  16  frames  to  8, 
when  putting  on  supers.  This  gives  the  queen  ample  room  to 
develop  her  fertility  previous  to  the  honey  crop,  but  it  compels 
the  beekeeper  to  make  numerous  manipulations  afterwards. 
We  want  a  brood  chamber  neither  too  large  nor  too  small, 
capable  of  accommodating  the  most  prolific  queens,  in  the  main 
apartment,  reserving  the  upper  stories  for  honey.  We  found 
it  in  the  hive  in  question. 

Twelve  and  Thirteen -frame  Langstroth  Hives 

A  number  of  practical  beekeepers,  who  have  also  discovered 
the  insufficiency  of  the  8  and  10-frame  Langstroth  hive,  are 
using  hives  containing  12  and  in  some  cases  13  frames.  These 
brood  chambers  are  equal  in  capacity  to  the  9-frame  Dadant 
brood  chambers,  but  the  great  number  of  frames  makes  them 
less  desirable.  Mr.  C.  F.  Davie  made  the  statement,  in  the 
American  Bee  Journal  for  October  1919,  that  comparative 
experiences  between  12-frame  Langstroth  hives  and  the  deeper 
hives  with  a  less  number  of  frames  were  all  in  favor  of  the  latter. 

Small  Hives 

As  we  have  shown  in  the  preceding  chapter,  we  ascertained 
positively  that  small  hives  produce  less  bees  than  large  ones, 
because  they  do  not  allow  full  scope  to  the  queen  for  her  breeding. 
But  this  is  not  all.  Small  hives  cause  much  swarming.  Small 
hives  contain  a  scant  amount  of  honey  for  winter.  Small  hives, 
being  less  populous,  their  cluster  is  in  greater  danger  in  winter. 
Small  hives  do  not  enable  the  apiarist  to  recognize  the  best 
or  most  prolific  queens,  when  he  wishes  to  select  breeders, 
since  they  are  in  a  reduced  space.  Small  hives  cast  more  but 
lighter  swarms  than  large  ones.  Small  hives  require  queen- 
excluders  over  the  brood  chamber  to  keep  the  queen  out  of  the 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


15 


Fig,  10.    Several  stories  of  eight  frame  hives  make  too  tall  a  pile 


supers.  Small  hives  have  a  smaller  base  of  support  than  larger 
ones,  have  to  be  tiered  higher  for  honey  capacity,  cause  a  higher 
climb  to  the  honey-laden  bees  and  are  probably  more  difficult 
to  ventilate  than  larger  ones. 

It  is  true  that  small  hives  are  cheaper  than  large  ones. 
But  as  they  often  have  to  be  tiered  higher  and  are  more  prone 
to  cast  swarms,  it  takes  a  greater  number  of  them  to  supply 
an  apiary.     So  the  economy  is  much  less  than  would  appear. 

Small  hives,  however,  have  the  advantage  of  being  easier 
to  carry  to  the  cellar  and  back,  easier  to  transport  from  one 
apiary  to  another,  easier  for  women  to  handle  in  making 
increase. 

An  advantage  in  the  manufacturing  of  the  shallow  hive 
which  has  had  great  weight  with  manufacturers  of  hives  is  that 
it  may  be  made  of  narrow  widths  of  lumber,  since  the  standard 
Langstroth  brood  chamber  may  be  cut  out  of   10  inch  stock 


16  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

boards,  while  the  Quinby-Dadant  brood  chamber  has  to  be  made 
of  lumber  over  12  inches  wide,  which  is  now  very  scarce,  or  be 
pieced  together  with  a  tongue  and  groove  joint.  This  has  been 
made  less  objectionable  by  placing  the  tongue  and  groove  near 
the  top  of  the  brood  chamber,  where  it  is  covered  by  the  strip 
that  supports  the  telescope  cover. 

Of  late  years,  in  a  view  of  economy,  even  shallow  brood 
chambers  have  been  made  in  two  pieces.  As  this  use  of  narrow 
lumber  is  likely  to  continue,  there  is  probably  little  manufactur- 
ing advantage  in  the  shallower  hive.  We  mention  it  only  be- 
cause of  the  criticism  expressed  by  some  manufacturers. 

Many  people,  bee  owners,  rather  than  bee  keepers,  do  not 
think  that  their  bees  are  doing  well  if  they  do  not  cast  swarms. 
For  such  people  the  small  hive  is  a  boon,  for  the  swarms  are 
numerous.  Commercial  beekeepers  view  the  matter  in  a 
different  light. 

The  greatest  excellence  of  the  small  hive,  in  the  minds  of 
many  people,  is  its  low  price.  But  what  would  we  say  of  a 
farmer  who  built  a  barn  insufficient  to  accommodate  more  than 
one  half  of  his  live  stock,  hay  and  implements?  As  Mr.  Lang- 
stroth  put  it:  "Hiving  a  large  swarm  of  bees  in  a  small  hive  may 
be  compared  to  harnessing  a  powerful  team  of  horses  to  a  baby 
wagon  or  wasting  a  noble  water-fall  in  turning  a  petty  water- 
wheel." 

These  are  the  qualities  as  well  as  the  limitations  of  the 
small  brood  chamber. 

From  the  experience  mentioned  above,  the  writer  came  to 
the  following  conclusions: 

A  large  brood-chamber  should  be  compact,  sufficient  for 
all  the  requirements  of  the  best  queens  and  for  supplying  all 
the  honey  that  a  populous  colony  needs  for  winter  and  spring, 
as  well  as  pollen  for  breeding. 

There  are  several  ways  to  increase  the  capacity  of  the 
Langstroth  hive.  A  10-frame  hive  may  be  increased  to  very 
nearly  the  proper  capacity,  equal  to  that  of  the  Dadant,  by 
adding  a  shallow  story  super  such  as  we  use  for  extracting. 
The  hive  may  also  be  doubled  by  adding  a  full  story  on  top. 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  17 

We  have  tried  both  methods.  ,  Neither  of  them  suits  us.     The 
explanation  will  be  found  farther  along. 


Fig.  11.    Shallow  brood  chambers  of  the  same  depth  as  supers  are  recom- 
mended by  some 

Shallow  brood-chambers,  six  inches  or  less  in  depth,  in  two, 
three  or  more  stories  are  recommended  by  some.  The  Heddon 
hive  which  was  so  praised  by  its  inventor  about  1886  and  created 
quite  a  sensation,  on  account  of  the  undoubted  ability  of  its 
deviser;  the  Danzenbaker  hive,  adopted  and  recommended 
also  by  capable  beekeepers  and  dealers;  both  of  these  styles, 
as  well  as  some  others  of  similar  kind  and  on  the  same  plan  as 
the  eke  or  the  nadir  of  old  time  beekeeping,  have  been  used  and 
sustained,  because  the  brood-chamber  #  could  be  "storified" 
as  the  British  say,  to  suit  the  requirements  of  the  best  or  poorest 
queens.  One  of  the  best  commercial  beekeepers  of  Texas,  Mr. 
Louis  Scholl,  uses  such  a  brood-chamber  and  succeeds.       His 


IS 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPIXC 


example,  however,  is  not  followed  even  among  his  neighbors, 
and  we  believe  we  know  the  reason  why. 


mm 


Fig.  12.    Ekes  or  nadirs  of  by-gone  days 

In  our  experiments  with  bees,  we  ascertained  a  fact  well- 
known  to  the  practical  beekeeper:  the  cluster  is,  as  much  as 
possible,  in  the  shape  of  a  ball;  the  laying  of  eggs  follows  a 
similar  plan;  the  queen  begins  in  the  center  of  the  cluster,  where 


Fig.  13.    The  DeLayens  long  idea  hive 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


19 


the  most  bees  are  congregated,  and  lays  her  eggs  in  a  circle 
around  that  center.  This  is  very  clearly  evidenced  when  one 
examines  a  comb  of  brood,  the  older  brood  always  being  at  the 
center. 

If  we  stop  to  think  a  few  moments  of  the  work  which  is 
required  of  the  queen,  in  order  that  she  may  lay  more  than 
3,000  eggs  per  day  during  weeks  in  succession,  we  will  readily 
comprehend  that  she  must  not  lose  much  time.  Should  she  lay 
her  eggs  without  method,  here  and  there,  she  would  be  unable  to 
fill  the  cells  with  regularity  and  celerity.  When  she  is  about  to 
lay,  she  thrusts  her  head  into  a  cell  that  she  believes  empty. 
If  that  cell  is  clean  and  ready  for  an  egg,  she  inserts  her  ab- 
domen in  it,  lays  the  egg  and  proceeds  to  another  cell.  Without 
a  regularity  continued  for  hours  and  days  together,  it  would  be 
impossible  for  her  to  supply  the  numerous  cells  with  eggs,  so 
as  to  leave  few  empty.  She  is  therefore  regular  in  her  actions 
and  goes  around  the  circle  with  but  little  loss  of  time.  A  very 
old  queen  fails  in  this  regularity  and  should  be  superseded. 


Fig.  14.    A  regularly  laid  and  well  filled  comb  of  worker  brood 


20  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

In  a  shallow  frame,  when  she  reaches  the  edge  of  the  comb, 
the  queen  finds  wood  instead  of  cells.  This  disturbs  her  and 
often  causes  her  to  retrace  her  steps  and  go  the  opposite  way. 
Even  only  a  cross  bar,  in  a  frame,  will  throw  a  queen  out  of 
direction  so  thoroughly  that  she  may  put  brood  only  on  one 
side  of  this  bar.  When  she  has  to  go  from  one  story  to  another 
she  again  loses  a  serious  amount  of  time.  When  the  season  is 
on  for  her  active  laying,  she  is  fed  so  plentifully  by  the  workers 
that  her  eggs  are  produced  and  protrude  from  her  abodmen, 
whether  she  is  able  to  lay  them  in  cells  or  not.  A  good  queen, 
in  a  swarm,  will  often  drop  eggs  in  such  number  that  they  may 
be  noticed  if  the  swarm  is  shaken  upon  a  black  cloth.  A  queen, 
imprisoned  in  the  hand,  during  the  period  of  active  laying, 
will  often  leave  eggs  between  our  fingers.  So  if  we  would  get 
the  best  service  out  of  a  queen,  we  must  put  her  in  a  hive  which 
will  give  her  the  greatest  facility  for  finding  cells  without  too 
much  search.  This  is  to  be  found  in  a  brood-chamber  with 
large  combs,  where  the  queen  may  lay  for  hours  without  being 
turned  away  from  her  routine  by  obstructions  of  any  kind. 

When  we  wonder  why  a  queen  lays  a  greater  number  of  eggs, 
in  a  brood-chamber  with  few  combs  of  large  size,  than  in  two 
or  more  shallow  brood-chambers,  superposed  over  one  another, 
with  a  bee-space  between  each  of  them,  the  explanation  is  found 
in  the  above  statement.  The  same  thing  explains  why,  when  a 
queen  has  once  gone  into  an  upper  story  to  lay,  she  hesitates  to 
return.  She  is  more  likely  to  go  up  into  a  third  than  to  come 
back  into  the  first.  But  when  she  has  ample  room,  on  a  limited 
number  of  combs,  to  satisfy  her  propensity  to  lay,  she  is  much 
more  likely  to  be  contented  and  there  is  more  egg-laying,  a  larger 
increase  of  population,  with  less  swarming. 

This,  then,  is  the  explanation  of  the  advantage  which 
we  found  in  results,  in  those  large  brood-chambers,  as  com- 
pared with  shallow  ones. 

Safety  in  Wintering 

The  advantage  of  the  large  brood-chambers  is  not  only 
in  securing  larger  families  at  the  right  time — a  large  force  for 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  21 

the  harvest — it  is  found  also  in  better  wintering  conditions. 
The  winter  cluster  of  bees  occupies  a  sphere-shaped  space, 
in  from  four  to  eight  frames,  in  the  center  of  the  brood-chamber. 
This  cluster  of  bees  is  perhaps  on  an  average  7  inches  in  diameter. 
This  means  that,  in  a  frame  measuring  eight  inches  in  depth, 
the  cluster  will  probably  be  within  an  inch  of  the  top.  In  a 
frame  measuring  lOj/j  inches  in  depth,  the  cluster  will  be  3^ 
inches  from  the  top.  In  the  deeper  frame,  there  may  be  4  or  5 
inches  of  honey,  placed  by  the  bees  at  the  top  of  the  combs. 
In  the  shallower  frame,  under  similar  conditions,  there  will 
not  be  much  more  than  three  inches  of  honey  in  the  same  position. 
The  deeper  hive  is  therefore  safer  for  wintering,  if  our  bees  are 
compelled  to  remain  clustered  in  the  same  spot  for  a  number 
of  weeks,  in  very  cold  weather.  As  heat  ascends,  they  will  be 
able  to  eat  the  honey  above  them  when  they  would  not  be  able 
to  eat  honey  at  the  end  of  the  combs,  away  from  the  cluster. 
This  theory,  again,  is  an  explanation  of  the  better  wintering  of 
bees  in  the  larger  and  deeper  hive,  which  we  found  invariable 
whenever  a  hard  winter  made  a  test  of  comparative  conditions. 

Frame  Spacing 

Another  advantage  of  the  large  brood-chambers,  which  we 
adopted  after  the  example  of  Quinby,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
greater  spacing  of  the  frames.  Quinby  spaced  his  frames — and 
therefore  the  combs  of  the  colony — \]/2  inches  from  center  to 
center.  He  followed  former  apiarists,  such  as  Dzierzon,  in  this, 
and  thought  it  the  correct  distance.  Langstroth  spaced  his 
combs  a  fraction  over  1^  inches  apart  and  thought  it  correct. 
The  manufacturers  of  hives  of  the  United  States,  without 
investigating  the  matter  very  deeply,  made  the  spacing  of  frames 
exactly  l^i.  They  had  good  authorities  behind  them,  for 
Berlepsch,  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  middle  of  the  19th  Century, 
asserted  that  this  spacing  was  the  one  followed  by  bees.  Adopt- 
ing the  Quinby  hive,  we  adopted  his  spacing.  When  the  matter 
was  discussed  and  we  referred  to  the  bees,  in  natural  condition, 
for  their  testimonial,  we  found  that  they  make  all  sorts  of  spacing 


22  DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

in  building  their  combs,  from  one  to  two  inches  or  even  more, 
from  center  to  center.  But  they  aim  to  have  their  worker-brood 
combs  a  half  inch  apart,  between  the  combs,  which  would 
about  represent  the  1 3  8  spacing,  from  center  to  center. 

All  this  may  look  very  unimportant  to  the  beginner.  Yet 
much  of  the  success  or  failure  of  beekeeping  depends  upon 
just  such  small  matters. 

The  supporters  of  the  narrow  spacing  look  upon  the  wide 
spacing  as  a  detriment  and  Mr.  Julius  Hoffman,  inventor  of  the 
frame  bearing  his  name,  wrote: 

"If  we  space  the  combs  from  center  to  center  \)'2  inches,  instead  of 
\^i,  then  we  have  an  empty  space  of  $4  inch  between  two  combs  of 
brood,  instead  of  l/2,  as  it  ought  to  be;  and  it  will  certainly  require  more 
bees  to  fill  and  keep  warm  a  y%  than  a  ]/2  inch  space.  Ina  K  inch  space, 
the  breeding  bees  from  the  two  combs  facing  each  other  will  join  with 
their  backs,  and  so  close  up  the  space  between  the  two  brood  combs. 
If  this  space  is  widened  to  ^  the  bees  cannot  do  this,  and  more  bees  will 
be  required  to  keep  up  the  needed  brood-rearing  temperature.  What 
a  drawback  this  would  ba  in  a  cool  spring,  when  our  colonies  are  still 
weak  in  numbers,  yet  breeding  most  desirable,  can  readily  be  under- 
stood." 

This  is  a  good  argument  but  it  does  not  work  well  in 
practice,  in  large  hives.  When  the  breeding  season  ends,  the 
bees  living  between  combs  spaced  1^2  inches  put  more  honey 
in  each  brood  comb,  since  there  is  more  room  and  they  do  not 
need,  then,  to  keep  the  cells  down  to  the  exact  length  of  the  bee 
chrysalis,  as  in  breeding  time.  So  the  comb,  or  that  part  of  it 
that  is  filled  with  honey,  is  thickened  so  as  to  leave  just  the 
necessary  room  for  the  bees  to  pass  through.  This  gives  a 
larger  amount  of  honey  than  in  narrow  combs;  the  bees  con- 
gregate there  in  greater  number  and  thus  winter  better.  They 
are  more  powerful  in  spring  and  the  cycle  of  the  year  is  reached 
with  better  success. 

The  above  theory  is  backed  by  facts.  Bees  in  large,  deep 
brood-chambers,  with  the  wide  spacing,  are  stronger,  winter 
better,  gain  strength  faster  than  those  in  shallow  hives,  all  other 
conditions  being  equal.  The  reader  will  remember  that  these 
facts  were  established  before  we  tried  to  explain  them  by  a 
theory.     No  theory  is  strong  unless  it  is  backed  by  the  facts  of 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  23 

experience.  The  experience  must  also  be  secured  on  a  sufficient 
scale  to  make  it  proof  against  possible  exceptions.  The  testing 
of  this  matter  on  hundreds  of  hives,  in  separate  apiaries,  treated 
in  similar  manner,  leaves  but  little  room  for  doubt  of  the  cor- 
rectness of  the  theory.  On  half  a  dozen  hives,  other  conditions 
might  change  the  result. 

The  spacing  of  combs,  the  wider  way,  has  also  some  in- 
fluence upon  the  question  of  swarming.  This  will  be  treated 
in  another  chapter. 

The  Supers 

The  proper  supers  to  use  in  beekeeping  depend  upon 
the  kind  of  honey  that  we  propose  to  produce.  If  we  are  to 
run  our  apiaries  for  comb-honey,  we  must  have  it  stored  by 
the  bees  in  a  way  that  will  enable  us  to  sell  it  in  the  most  satis- 
factory and  profitable  manner. 

When  we  began  beekeeping  on  a  large  scale,  the  little 
section,  made  of  basswood  folded  and  containing  a  pound  of 
honey  or  less,  had  not  yet  made  its  appearance.  But  sections 
made  of  wood,  holding  from  2  to  4  pounds,  had  already  been  pro- 
duced. Much  of  the  honey  was  also  secured  in  boxes,  the  average 
of  them  being  made  of  light  wood,  with  one  or  more  sides  of  glass 
and  of  a  size  to  hold  6  pounds,  more  or  less.  One  or  more 
holes,  an  inch  in  diameter  at  the  bottom  of  such  a  box,  allowed 
the  bees  to  enter,  but  did  not  provide  for  sufficient  ventilation. 
So  the  supers  used  at  that  date  were  designed  to  prevent,  rather 
than  encourage  the  storing  of  honey. 

In  producing  large  crops,  we  found  the  bees  hostile  to 
small  compartments.  They  would  place  hundreds  of  pounds 
of  honey  in  those  large  Quinby  frames,  if  available,  while  they 
very  reluctantly  stored  a  few  pounds  in  small  receptacles. 

Other  beekeepers  have  found  the  same  thing.  Oliver 
Foster,  years  ago,  wrote: 

"When  we  take  into  consideration  that  the  object,  on  the  part  of 
the  bees,  in  storing  up  honey  in  summer,  is  to  have  it  accessible  for  winter 
consumption,  and  that,  in  winter,  the  bees  collect  in  a  round  ball,  as 
nearly  as  possible,  in  a  semi-torpid  state,  with  but  little  motion,  except 
that  gradual  moving  of  bees  from  the  center  to  the  surface  and    from 


24  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

the  surface  to  the  center  of  this  ball,  we  may  imagine  how  unwelcome 
it  is  to  them  to  be  obliged  to  divide  their  stores  between  four  separate 
apartments,  each  of  which  is  4  inches  square  and  12  inches  long,  with 
no  communication  between  these  apartments." 

All  the  experiments  made  by  us  led  us  to  the  conclusion 
that  we  could  produce  twice  as  much  honey  in  frames  located 
above  the  brood  combs,  without  hindrances  to  the  travel  back 
and  forth  of  the  workers,  the  honey  to  be  taken  out  of  these 
with  the  honey  extractor  which  had  then  just  been  invented, 
as  we  had  ever  produced  in  small  sections  or  boxes. 

But  whether  to  use  the  double  story,  or  a  shallow  story 
for  super,  on  the  top  of  the  large  brood-chamber,  was  a  question 
upon  which  we  had  to  experiment,  for  very  little  had  been 
done  in  this  line. 

The  experiment  was  made  on  a  large  number  of  hives 
both  with  the  deep  brood-chambers  and  the  Langstroth  hives. 
With  the  former  the  matter  was  settled  at  once.  The  brood 
combs  were  al^e^fer  too  large  to  be  used  in  a  super.  There 
was  too  muc»  <$&ger  of  heavy  combs  breaking  down,  when 
full  of  hone^  tQ^much  trouble  in  extracting.  Besides,  a  deep 
super  seen&d  ^p  attract  the  queen,  when  a  shallow  super  did 
not.  WjA  life  Langstroth  brood  chambers,  the  objections  to 
a  deep  Ameirstory  were  not  so  flagrant;  yet  they  appeared  to 
us  qui^  sufficient  to  condemn  it.  There  was  often  too  much 
room  at^*ie  time,  so  much  so  that  a  number  of  people  who 
double  the  size  of  their  brood-chamber,  previous  to  the  honey 
crop,  often  think  it  necessary  to  add  the  second  story  at  the 
bottom,  instead  of  the  top.  Then  these  combs  were  not  so 
handy  as  those  that  we  adopted  at  that  time,  for  extracting 
combs,  with  the  advice  of  Mr.  Langstroth.  Shallow  frames, 
such  as  have  been  offered  by  dealers,  are  too  shallow.  Those 
that  we  use  are  of  the  right  size  to  be  uncapped  at  one  stroke 
of  the  knife  and  yet  they  contain  nearly  100  square  inches  of 
comb,  or  over  two  thirds  of  the  capacity  of  a  standard  Lang- 
stroth brood-frame.  Although  we  have  often  heard  beekeepers 
say  that  they  could  not  tolerate  two  different  sizes  of  frames 
in  their    apiary,    we    find    less    objection    to    these   extracting 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


25 


Fig.  15.     Comparison  of  Langstroth  and  Dadant  extracting  supers 


combs  than  any  one  can  find  to  the  use  of  sections  for  comb- 
honey. 

The  fact  that  bees  prefer  large  combs  in  which  to  store  their 
honey,  instead  of  small  boxes,  has  been  also  determined  by  bee- 
keepers in  many  sections.  In  Texas,  especially,  many  beekeepers 
produce  what  is  called  "bulk  honey  or  chunk  honey,"  honey  in 
large  combs  which  is  cut  out  of  the  frames  and  marketed  in  tins, 
with  a  sufficient  amount  of  extracted  honey  to  fill  the  interstices 
between  the  cut  combs.  During  a  visit  the  writer  made  in  South- 
ern Texas,  he  was  told  that  beekeepers  could  expect  one  third  more 
honey  from  their  bees,  in  large  combs  running  the  full  length 
of  the  hive,  than  in  small  receptacles.  This  he  believed  readily, 
for  the  assertion  was  in  agreement  with  his  own  experience. 
Aside  from  the  reasons  invoked  by  Oliver  Foster,  mentioned  in 
a  previous  paragraph,  regarding  the  habits  of  the  bees,  the  long 
comb  in  the  super  is  more  easily  reached  by  the  workers,  is  more 
easily  ventilated,  and  more  homelike  in  every  way.  The  colony 
morale — to  use  an  expressive  phrase  originated  by  Geo.  S. 
Demuth — the  colony  morale  is  enhanced  by  such  supers,  the 


26  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

work   with    more   entrain    and    often   yield  much  greater 
results. 

An  experiment  made  by  us  upon  a  number  of  supers,  in 
which  both  pound  sections  and  full  length  combs  were  used,  left 
us  not  a  shadow  of  doubt  as  to  the  bees'  preference.  Every 
practical  beekeeper  knows  that  bees  begin  the  storing  of  honey 
in  the  super  in  that  part  of  it  which  is  nearest  to  the  brood, 
usually  the  center  of  the  hive.  Placing  both  full  length  combs 
and  sections,  supplied  equally  with  comb  foundation,  together 
in  supers,  but  with  the  sections  in  the  most  favorable  part,  near- 
est the  brood,  we  saw  the  bees  invariably  begin  their  storing  in 
the  full  length  combs,  although  remoter  from  the  brood,  and 
they  were  filled  before  the  sections  were  fairly  begun.  Any 
experimenter  can  easily  test  this  himself. 

Side  Storage 

In  a  former  chapter,  we  mentioned  very  wide  hives,  with 
side  storage,  under  what  is  now  termed  "the  long  idea"  system. 
Such  hives  are  used  in  a  number  of  localities,  but  the  very  deep 
hives  are  better  suited  to  this  method.  So  the  most  persistent 
system  of  side  storage  is  followed  with  the  De  Layens  hive,  con- 
taining as  many  as  20  or  more  frames,  12  or  13  inches  deep  or 
nearly  square.  The  difficulty  is  that  the  queen  is  at  liberty  to 
roam  from  one  comb  to  another  and  may  have  a  little  brood  in 
most  of  the  frames.  Then  the  honey  is  difficult  to  extract.  We 
even  tried  section  boxes  and  storage  boxes  in  the  sides  of  those 
hives.  The  bees  prefer  to  place  their  honey  close  to  the  brood 
and  as  much  as  possible  above  it.  This  side  storage  proved 
inacceptable,  whether  in  frames  or  sections. 

Queen-Excluders 

It  is  quite  the  custom  for  beekeepers  to  use  queen-excluders 
between  the  brood  apartment  and  the  supers,  whether  running 
for  extracted  honey  or  for  comb-honey.  This  is  because  the 
average  beehive  is  too  small  in  its  brood-chamber  to  accommo- 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


27 


Fig.  16.    Queen  excluders  exclude  ven- 
tilation and  free  access  to  the  supers 


date  the  average  prolific 
queen.  She  fills  it  and 
tries  to  go  elsewhere.  She 
will  naturally  go  up,  since 
the  upper  story  is  always 
warm.  The  beekeeper  is 
then  forced  to  use  some 
method  that  will  confine 
the  queen  within  certain 
limits. 

In  these  conditions,  the 
queen-excluder  comes  into 

good  service.  It  is  composed  of  a  frame  provided  with  a  sheet  of 
perforated  metal,  with  a  bee-space  above  and  below,  and  placed 
between  the  two  stories.  This  perforated  metal  was,  as  far  as 
we  knew,  first  recommended  by  a  Lorrainer  cure,  Collin,  about 
the  middle  of  the  past  century.  The  perforations  are  of  such 
size  that  the  worker  bees  can  pass  through  them,  but  neither 
the  queen  nor  the  drones  can  get  through,  owing  to  the  greater 
size  of  their  corslet  or  thorax. 

The  first  queen-excluders  made  were  objectionable,  con- 
stituting a  very  serious  obstacle  to  the  free  passage  of  the  bees 
and  of  ventilation.  Ventilation  is  very  important,  as  the  bees, 
in  the  summer  months,  are  very  numerous  in  the  hive.  They 
need  pure  air  as  we  do,  and  their  great  numbers  increase  the 

temperature  of  the  hive  to 
the  danger  point,  unless 
they  can  force  air  up 
through  the  hive  and  out 
again,  so  as  to  keep  the 
temperature  below  the  dan- 
ger point,  or  about  blood 
heat. 


Fig.  17.  Modern  excluders  are  better 

than  the  old,  but  are  still  in 

the  way  of  the  bees 


Queen-excluders  are  now 
made,  with  wire  spacing, 
which  are  much  less  objection- 


28  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

able.  Yet  they  are  still  an  obstruction  to  the  free  passage 
of  air  and  to  the  active  travel  of  bees  over  the  combs.  Besides, 
they  are  expensive,  easily  put  out  of  service,  and  are  often  glued 
by  the  bees  in  such  fashion  as  to  make  their  removal  difficult. 
We  do  not  use  them,  for  these  reasons  and  the  following: 

With  the  large,  deep  hives,  it  is  rare  to  have  the  queen  ascend 
into  the  upper  story,  unless  she  is  seeking  for  drone-comb  in 
which  to  lay  and  cannot  find  any  in  her  brood  apartment.  But 
if  there  is  no  drone-comb  in  the  upper  story — and  there  need 
not  be  any  if  we  have  used  comb-foundation,  she  will  have  no 
inducement  to  move  to  the  upper  story.  If  she  goes  there  acci- 
dentally, she  will  go  back  to  the  lower  story  readily  for  the 
very  reason,  already  mentioned,  that  a  queen  likes  to  lay  eggs 
on  large  combs  where  the  laying  is  not  interrupted  by  the  ob- 
stacles of  top  and  bottom  bars  and  bee-spaces. 

It  is  well,  however,  to  say  to  the  reader  that  bees  do  nothing 
invariably  and  that  there  will  be  queens  and  occasions,  even  in 
large  hives,  when  there  will  be  brood  reared  in  the  upper  story. 
But  the  quantity  of  this  will  be  so  limited  that  it  will  never  be 
profitable  to  use  queen-excluders.  This  again  was  tested  by  us 
on  an  extensive  scale. 

In  the  production  of  comb-honey,  with  small  hives,  on  a 
commercial  scale,  the  excluder  is  often  necessary,  for  without  it 
the  queen  may  ascend  into  the  comb-honey  supers,  lay  eggs  in 
a  few  of  the  cells  and  thus  spoil  the  looks  and  the  value  of  the 
honey  for  market.  With  our  management,  the  production  of 
extracted  honey  and  large  brood-chambers,  we  have  but  one 
term  to  describe  the  queen-excluder.  It  is  a  nuisance,  rarely 
necessary  with  our  system. 


CHAPTER  3 
Drones  and  Drone  Production 

"The  drone"  wrote  Butler,  in  1609,  "is  a  gross  stingless 
bee,  that  spendeth  his  time  in  gluttony  and  idleness."  After  300 
years,  we  cannot  find  a  better  description.  The  drones  are  the 
male  bees.  They  are  reared  in  large  numbers,  in  a  state  of  nature, 
in  every  hive,  because  the  young  queens  mate,  out  of  the  hive, 
on  the  wing,  and  it  is  necessary  that  each  queen  be  enabled  to 
promptly  find  a  mate,  in  the  air.  In  domesticity,  or  when  colonies 
of  bees  are  congregated  in  large  numbers  in  a  single  spot,  the 
drones  produced  by  one  or  two  colonies  are  ample  for  the  one 
hundred  young  queens  that  may  be  produced ;  since  each  colony 
easily  rears  two  or  three  thousand  drones.  The  drone  requires  25 
days  to  change  from  the  fresh  laid  egg  to  the  perfect  insect. 
He  never  visits  the  flowers,  goes  out  only  in  the  warm  part  of 
the  day,  to  seek  a  mate,  and  comes  home  with  a  good  appetite, 
to  feed  upon  the  stores  gathered  by  the  indefatigable  workers. 

There  is  quite  a  little  prejudice  in  favor  of  the  drones  among 
a  certain  class  of  bee  owners.  They  see  the  strongest  colonies 
produce  a  large  number  of  drones,  then  swarm,  and  they  deduce 
from  'this  that  the  drone,  in  some  manner,  is  an  influence  of 
benefit  to  the  colony.  Some  say  they  keep  the  brood  warm; 
others  think  that  they  encourage  the  bees  to  greater  activity; 
in  short,  they  believe  that,  outside  of  his  functions  as  male, 
the  drone  has  a  beneficial  influence  upon  the  success  of  the 
colony.  They  mistake  the  result  for  the  cause.  Bees  rear  many 
drones  when  they  are  prosperous,  but  they  are  not  necessarily 
prosperous  because  they  rear  many  drones.  Similarly,  if  we 
meet  a  man  with  a  frock  coat  and  a  silk  hat,  we  may  conclude 
that  he  is  wealthy,  but  we  must  not  ascribe  the  cause  of  his 
wealth  to  the  wearing  of  expensive  garments.  We  take  it  to 
be  a  result  instead. 

This  matter  of  drone  production  and  of  their  possible 
usefulness  was  thoroughly  tested   by   us.     Selecting  our  best 

29 


30 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


Fig.  IS.    Comb  built  without  foundation  or  with  only  a  small  starter.    It 
is  practically  all  drone  comb 


producing  colonies,  we  supplied  their  hives  with  a  plentiful 
amount  of  drone-combs,  so  that  the  queens  that  we  would  rear 
would  be  sure  to  mate  with  good  sires.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  deprived  colonies  from  which  we  did  not  desire  males,  from 
the  possibilities  of  producing  a  large  number  of  drones.  This 
was  readily  achieved  by  removing  from  those  colonies  all  the 
drone-combs  that  we  could  find  and  replacing  them  with  work- 
er combs.  Had  we  not  replaced  them  with  worker  combs,  the 
bees  would  have  rebuilt  them  with  drone-combs,  as  they  did, 
in  fact,  wherever  we  neglected  to  do  this.  Bees  prefer  to 
build  drone-combs  because  the  cells  are  larger  and  require  less 
material  and  less  time,  than  worker-combs,  so  unless  the  queen 
desires  worker-combs  in  which  to  lay,  and  she  usually  appears  to 
make  her  desire  known  to  them,  they  will  usually  rebuild  the 
drone-combs  that  we  remove,  in  the  same  kind.  There  are 
always  some  drone-cells,  here  and  there,  and,  in  the  very  best 
managed  hive,  the.  bees  will   probably  rear  from  200  to  300 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  31 

drones.     But  so  small  a  number  is  not  objectionable.     It  is  the 
rearirg  of  thousands  which  is  expensive  and  worse  than  useless. 

It  is  perhaps  necessary  to  give  consideration,  in  this  chapter, 
to  the  statement  above  mentioned,  and  made  by  superficial 
observers,  that  the  drones  are  useful  in  keeping  the  brood  warm. 
This  belief  was  so  common  that  in  the  old  days,  French  bee- 
keepers often  called  the  drones  by  the  name  of  "couveuses" 
(setters);  comparing  them  to  the  setting  hens  of  the  poultry 
yard.  But  alas,  the  drones  are  reared  at  great  expense  by  the 
bees,  at  the  beginning  of  the  season,  at  a  time  when  the  workers 
could  more  profitably  nurse  other  worker-bees.  When  the  drones 
are  hatched  and  begin  to  suggest  to  us  the  possibility  of  their 
usefulness  in  that  way,  if  a  cold  spell  of  weather  comes,  cutting 
off  the  honey  supply,  the  bees  begin  to  drive  them  away,  ex- 
terminating them  without  mercy.  With  the  return  of  warm 
weather,  they  again  rear  a  horde  of  those  useless  beings,  nursing 
them  and  coddling  them,  until  the  end  of  the  harvest  points  to 
them  the  necessity  of  again  ridding  their  home  of  these  "idle 
gluttons." 

So  it  is  very  clear  to  us,  as  it  must  be  to  any  impartial 
observer,  that  the  prevention  of  drone  production,  in  hives 
from  which  we  do  not  wish  to  breed,  is  in  the  line  of  progress. 
We  therefore  make  it  a  rule  to  examine  colonies  in  early  spring, 
and  exchange  their  drone-combs  for  comb  of  worker  cells. 
Comb-foundation  is  not  quite  so  safe;  as  we  have  seen,  in  rare 
instances  it  is  true,  the  bees  build  drone-cells  over  a  worker 
cell  foundation.  We  have  been  told  that  bees  will  even  tear 
down  worker-cells  to  build  drone-cells  in  their  place.  This  we 
do  not  believe,  for  we  have  made  the  experiment  of  furnishing  a 
natural  swarm  with  a  hive  full  of  drone  comb  and  found  thatthe 
bees  were  incapable  of  grasping  the  possibility  of  tearing  it  down 
to  secure  worker-cells.  They  slowly  and  reluctantly  narrowed 
the  mouth  of  the  cells  to  the  dimension  of  worker-cells  and  the 
queen  laid  worker-eggs  in  them.  There  is  no  more  probability 
of  their  changing  worker  into  drone  cells  than  the  reverse 
This  experiment  was  also  tried  by  three  leading  apiarists  ot 
Europe  with  the  same  result.     They  were  Messrs.   Drory  of 


32 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OP     BEEKEEPTXO 


Bordeaux,  Cowan  of   London  and   Bruennich   of  Switzerland. 
The  results  which  they  obtained  confirmed  our  own. 

Although  it  is  difficult  to  put  in  figures  the  economy  in 
honey  secured  by  preventing  the  bees  of  a  colony  from  rearing 
2,000  or  more  drones,  the  attentive  student  will  readily  grasp 
the  advantage  of  the  system.  Two  thousand  drones  take  as 
much  room  in  the  breeding  cells  as  3,000  workers.  Thirty-six 
drones  are  raised  in  a  square  inch  of  comb,  while  the  same  space 
will  accommodate  55  workers.  The  amount  of  food  required 
is  similarly  larger.  But  it  is  after  they  are  hatched  as  full- 
fledged  insects  that  the  difference  in  results  looms  up.  The 
3,000  workers  will  be  an  army  of  active  producers,  while  the 
2,000  gross  gluttons,  staying  home  most  of  the  time,  get  in  the 
way  of  the  workers  during  the  best  and  most  important  part  of  the 
honey-producing  day,  from  10  to  4  o'clock. 

It  is  true  that  we  are  not  always  sure  of  securing  3,000 
workers  in  place  of  2,000  drones,  for  the  queen  may  not  lay  so 
actively  when  she  becomes  tired ;  but  the  economy  will  show  itself 
so  plainly  that  the  beekeeper  who  tries  our  method  of  doing  away 
with  drone-comb  will  never  regret  it.  In  fact  we  believe  that  the 
saving  in  honey,  from  the  prevention  of  undesired  drone 
production,  will  be  sufficient  to  pay  for  a  new  set  of  combs 
every  three  years. 

Many  apiarists  have  noticed  the 
objectionable  features  of  over-production 
of  drones.  But  they  have  employed, 
to  do  away  with  them,  means  that  were 
worse  than  the  evil  of  the  presence  of 
the  drones.  Drone-traps,  which  every 
dealer  in  bee-supplies  finds  himself  com- 
pelled to  keep  for  sale,  because  they 
are  in  demand  among  the  ill-informed,  are  worse  than 
useless.  They  hinder  the  bees  in  their  flight,  the  drones  crowd 
in  them  and  stop  the  ventilation,  the  beekeeper  is  compelled  to 
examine  them  daily  to  remove  the  dead  drones,  and  after  all 
they  only  do  away  with  the  mature  drones,  when  the  bees  have 
gone  to  the  expense  of  rearing  them. 


Fig.  19.  The  drone  trap 
should  not  be  used  except 
in  rare  instances 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  33 

Other  beekeepers  make  it  a  practice  to  behead  the  drones 
when  in  the  cells,  before  they  are  emerged.  The  sealed  drone- 
cells  have  the  peculiar  rounded  appearance  of  a  revolver  bullet 
in  the  shell,  so  they  are  easily  seen.  But  when  we  cut  off  the 
heads  of  this  brood,  we  give  the  bees  the  unpleasant  task  of 
throwing  out  of  the  hive  all  this  dead  brood,  which  they  pull 
out  of  the  cells  with  a  great  deal  of  labor.  Then,  as  soon  as  those 
cells  have  been  emptied  and  burnished,  there  is  good  chance 
for  the  queen  to  refill  them,  with  the  same  number  of  drones, 
at  additional  cost  to  the  bees,  doubling  the  work  and  the  expense. 

It  is  therefore  very  important,  and  we  urge  it  upon  the 
beekeeper  who  wishes  to  succeed,  to  remove  all  drone-comb 
from  every  colony  except  those  selected  by  him  as  breeders,  re- 
placing all  this  drone-comb  at  once  with  worker-combs. 


CHAPTER  4 
The  Dadant  Hive 

In  describing  the  hive  which  we  have  been  using  for  years, 
we  will  first  give  it  in  all  its  details.  We  will  then  show  the  de- 
tails which  may  be  dispensed  with,  in  the  use  of  as  simple  a 
brood-chamber  as  it  is  possible  to  have  while  carrying  on  an 
extensive  honey  production. 


Fig.  20.    Detailed  cross-section  of  the  original  Dadant  hive 

AA,  cross-pieces  to  support  the  bottom,  18x2x2.  B,  bottom,  25xl7^x 
H.  C,  apron,  10x17  *AxH.  DD,  front  and  rear  of  the  hive,  16Mxl2^x^. 
E,  entrance,  8x}i.  F,  double  board  nailed  at  the  rear,  18}4xl3xj4.  GG, 
square  slats  to  support  the  cover.  H.lath,  lAxl%,  to  widen  the  top  edge 
of  the  front  board.  I,  top  bar  of  frame,  2034x1  lA  wide  xj4  thick.  JJJJ, 
rabbets  Y^  wide  x  ^i  high,  dug  in  front  and  rear  boards,  and  furnished 
with  sheets  of  iron  %  inches  wide,  or  metal  spacers  projecting  34  of  an 
inch,  on  which  the  frame-shoulders  are  supported.  If  the  grooves  are  not 
provided  with  these,  their  size  should  .be  lAx*/i. 

KKKK,  shows  how  the  uprights  NN  of  the  frames  are  nailed  to 

35 


36 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


the  top  bar.  M,  bottom  bar  of  the  frame,  \7-?4x}yixj4.  NN,  sides  of  the 
frame,  11  Mx!56xJ^.  PP,  front  and  rear  of  the  cap,  18^x9x^.  RR,  front 
and  rear  of  the  surplus-box,  16Hx6%x>6.  T,  empty  space  on  top  of  the 
surplus-box,  134  for  the  cloth  and  mat.  U,  top  bar  of  the  surplus-frame, 
same  as  top-bar  I.  V,  bottom  bar  of  the  surplus  frame,  same  as  M.  YY, 
sides  of  the  surplus  frames,  6xJ4x^. 

The  space  between  M  and  B  is  about  Yi  inch;  between  DN,  ND, 
VI,  RY,  YR,  should  be  Y  to  }i  of  an  inch.  Hives  of  every  size  can  be 
constructed  on  this  diagram,  with  the  only  caution  to  preserve  the  spaces 
of  the  width  indicated.  Both  top  bars  are  grooved  on  the  under  side  for 
foundation  and  wedge, 

The  hive  body  is  made  with  a  projection  or  rabbet,  cut  into 
the  two  side  boards,  at  the  bottom,  to  fit  down  on  each  side  of 


Fig.  21.    Details  of  underside  of  Dadant  hive 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


37 


the  bottom  board.  The  rear  is  double.  The  inner  rear  board 
fits  down  upon  the  bottom  while  the  outer  board  drops  down 
behind  it.  This  effectually  encases  the  bottom  on  3  sides.  The 
purpose  of  this  is  to  prevent  cold  air,  moisture,  moths,  robbers, 
&c,  more  effectively  than  with  the  ordinary  bottom. 

A  wire  guide,  at  the  center,  near  the  bottom  board,  keeps 
the  frames  apart.  It  is  more  needed  in  a  hive  of  this  depth 
than  with  the  depth  of  the  ordinary  Langstroth  hive,  but  it 
could   be  dispensed  with,  especially  with  self -spacing  frames. 

The  frame  guides,  at  the  point  where  the  frame  shoulders 
rest,  in  the  upper  rabbets  at  both  ends,  were  not  used  by  us 


H  i     /'W  < 


Fig.  22.   Dadant  hive  open;  a,  body;  b,  alighting  board;  c,  entrance  block; 
d,  cap;  e,  straw  mat;/,  oil  cloth;  g,  frame  of  foundation 


38  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

until  we  found  it  necessary  to  employ  inexperienced  men  in 
our  apiary  work.  Many  old  practical  beekeepers  still  dispense 
with  the  guides.  We  have  never  liked  the  self-spacing  frames. 
We  made  a  large  number  of  them,  in  the  early  days,  similar  to 
the  Hoffman  frames,  but  their  projections  were  finally  all 
whittled  off  by  us,  to  secure  loose  hanging  frames.  The  only 
advantage  we  can  see  to  the  Hoffman  frame  is  the  possibility 
of  handling  several  of  them  in  one  handful.  But  we  never  open 
hives  unless  we  wish  to  manipulate  them  and  we  then  prefer 
to  handle  each  frame  separately. 

More  or  less  bees  are  crushed  in  the  joints  of  self-spacing 
frames,  and  where  a  great  deal  of  propolis  is  stored  by  the  bees 
they  sometimes  stick  together  unsatisfactorily. 

We  made  the  bottom  boards  with  the  grain  of  the  wood 
running  lengthwise  of  the  hive.  We  have  also  made  them  with 
the  grain  crosswise.    We  prefer  the  latter  way. 

The  blocks,  upon  which  the  hive  bottom  is  nailed,  are  use- 
ful in  keeping  the  hive  up  from  the  earth.  When  we  use  cement 
stands,  the  blocks  are  not  needed,  as  pieces  Y%  of  an  inch  are 
sufficient.  The  latter  make  the  hive  less  cumbrous  and  lighter. 
When  colonies  are  taken  to  the  low  lands  for  fall  flowers,  as 
sometimes  practiced  by  us,  the  lighter  bottom  boards  are 
more  convenient.  In  such  cases,  some  sorts  of  blocks  are  used, 
sometimes  only  stovewood  blocks,  to  keep  the  hive  bottom  up 
from  the  ground. 

The  double  back  of  the  hive  is  for  the  purpose  of  protecting 
the  colony  better  against  cold.  We  aim  to  face  the  hives  south 
as  nearly  as  possible,  since  the  north  side  is  always  the  coldest. 
The  double  rear  wall  on  the  north,  and  the  division  board  on  the 
west,  we  believe  to  be  very  efficient  in  protecting  the  colony 
against  cold. 

The  telescoping  cover,  reaching  down  ^4  of  an  inch  all 
around  the  body,  and  resting  on  a  rim,  was  adapted  from 
Langstroth's  original  ideas,  as  shown  in  figures,  9,  13,  &c, 
of  his  original  work.  The  greatest  advantage  of  this  telescoping 
cap  is  the  ability  to  cover  the  upper  edge  of  the  brood  chamber, 
in  an  efficient  manner.     After  a  few  seasons'  use  of  hives,  the 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF    BEEKEEPING  39 

upper  edges  of  the  brood  chamber  and  the  lower  edges  of  the  su- 
pers become  rounded  and  worn  so  that  it  is  often  difficult  to  pre- 
vent robber-bees  from  securing  a  passage  through  the  gaping 
joints.  The  telescope  cap  entirely  prevents  this,  is  also  efficient 
in  covering  feeders,  placed  over  the  combs  of  the  brood  nest,  and 
makes  an  excellent  chaff  compartment  for  winter-packing 
material  over  the  brood-nest. 

A  lA  inch  slat  is  used  at  the  upper  edge  of  the  hive  front, 
to  widen  the  projecting  edge  next  to  the  rabbet.  This  may 
seem  a  very  unnecessary  contrivance.  Yet  it  is  very  useful, 
as  it  helps  us  to  fit  cloths,  straw  mats,  supers,  &c,  more  readily 
without  leaving  a  smelling  place  for  inquisitive  neighbor  bees. 
Those  who  have  kept  bees  for  25  years  or  more  in  the  same  hives 
know  how  annoying  the  lack  of  adjustment  sometimes  is, 
owing  to  wear  and  tear,  and  to  the  use  of  the  hive  tool  in  prying 
apart  the  stories. 

The  division  board  is  sometimes  called  a  "dummy."  Yet 
there  is  a  great  difference  between  the  two.  A  dummy  is  only  a 
board  shaped  like  one  of  the  frames,  and  of  the  same  size. 
It    fills   the   place   of  a   frame,    but   does   not   conserve  heat 


Fig.  23.    The  division  board  of  the  Dadant  hive 

any  better  than  the  frame  of  empty  comb.  Our  division  board 
is  closed  at  both  ends,  with  a  rounding  piece  of  oil  cloth,  tacked 
on  it.  It  effectually  prevents  the  circulation  of  air  on  the  ends. 
Of  course,  if  we  were  to  make  it  of  the  exact  length  of  the  inside 
of  the  hive,  we  would  have  great  trouble  in  moving  it  when 


40  DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

necessary,  because  the  bees  would  glue  it  fast.  But  with  the 
soft  cloth  on  both  ends,  it  is  moved  without  jar  and  without 
trouble.  We  remove  it  temporarily  when  we  need  room  to 
handle  the  frames,  in  searching  for  a  queen,  for  brood,  &c. 
It  is  also  moved  up  to  the  number  of  combs  actually  occupied 
by  bees  and  honey,  when  a  small  colony  inhabits  the  hive. 
The  reader  will  bear  in  mind  that  the  hive  is  made  for  10  frames 
and  a  division  board,  while  an  ordinary  Langstroth  8-frame 
hive,  when  full,  has  less  capacity  than  6  frames  of  the  Dadant 
hive.  We  may  therefore  have  occasion  to  winter  a  small  colony 
on  6  frames,  filling  the  space  behind  our  division  board  with 
forest  leaves,  or  other  warm  material,  and  our  colony  will  be 
more  compact  and  will  stand  a  better  chance  of  wintering 
safely  than  the  colonies  in  8-frame  Langstroth  hives. 

The  division  board,  however,  is  not  made  to  touch  the 
bottom  of  the  hive,  but  a  bee  space  is  left  under  it.  Our  reason 
for  this  is  that,  often,  bees  have  found  themselves  imprisoned 
behind  a  full  depth  board .  Also,  in  manipulations,  it  is  inadvisable 
to  use  a  board  which  may  crush  bees  when  put  down  in  place. 
Our  board  does  not  crush  any  bees  and  yet  serves  the  purpose 
of  confining  the  heat  of  the  cluster.  Since  heat  rises,  there  is 
but  little  deperdition  of  it  at  the  bottom.  Not  so,  with  the 
dummy,  which  is  open  on  both  ends  and  serves  very  little  purpose. 
The  top  slat,  or  top  bar,  of  this  division  board,  is  made  of  ex- 
actly the  same  size  and  thickness  as  the  top  bar  of  a  frame. 
It  fits  in  the  same  rabbet  and  is  not  in  the  way  of  the  supers. 

The  oilcloth  over  the  combs  has  proven  very  superior 
to  honey  boards,  as  the  bees  cannot  glue  it  fast  as  they  do  a 
board.  When  wre  remove  a  honey  board  from  the  top  of  a  brood - 
chamber,  there  is  a  commotion  and  a  jar,  for  it  is  always  glued. 
In  cool  weather,  the  removal  of  such  a  board  sets  the  entire 
colony  in  an  uproar,  as  a  kick  from  the  operator  might  do. 
A  cloth  is  pulled  gently  from  the  top  of  the  frame  and  "peels 
off"  just  as  far  as  wanted,  without  any  jar  and  without  exciting 
the  bees. 

We  have  used  oil  cloths,  painted  ducking,  khaki,  gunny 
cloth,  &c.    Anything  which  will  confine  the  bees  will  do.    Fome 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  41 

object  to  these  articles  because  the  bees  tear  them  up.  It  is  true 
that  they  do  so,  in  the  course  of  time.  However,  if  the  cloths 
are  strong  and  well  painted,  they  last  a  long  time.  Their  use- 
fulness permits  us  to  put  up  with  their  inconveniences.  We 
replace  them  as  often  as  needed. 

The  oil  cloth  is  constantly  kept  upon  the  hive,  except 
in  winter.  When  putting  on  supers  we  place  it  at  the  top  of 
the  supers. 

The  straw  mat  is  an  implement  which  very  few  people 
use.  It  is  essentially  a  European  implement,  cheap  and  service- 
able. European  gardeners  use  mats  of  all  sizes,  to  protect  their 
cold  frames,  their  hot  house  windows,  their  chicken  coops  or 
rabbit  dens.  We  make  them  of  the  proper  size  for  the  top  of 
the  frames.  They  keep  out  the  cold  in  winter  and  the  heat 
in  summer.  In  winter,  the  cloth  being  removed,  the  mat  is 
placed  directly  over  the  combs,  then  absorbents  over  that. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  economical  implements  of  the  bee  hive. 
Chas.  F.  Muth,  an  eminent  beekeeper  of  the  olden  days,  whom  the 
writer  knew  well,  used  similar  mats  and  considered  them  very 
valuable,  as  we  do.  But  they  do  not  seem  attractive  to  the 
average  beekeeper.  Yet  they  keep  away  the  heat  of  the  sun, 
in  July,  as  efficiently  as  the  cold  of  winter,  in  January. 

The  telescope  cover  is  made  to  accommodate  at  least  the 
depth  of  one  super.  It  might  be  made  much  shallower,  but  we 
have  found  it  very  handy  in  covering  feeders.  When  more  than 
one  super  is  on,  the  telescope  cover  does  not  reach  down.  At  that 
time  it  matters  little  whether  the  joints  of  the  hive  and  of  the 
different  supers  are  uncovered,  for  that  is  the  time  of  the 
honey  harvest  and  bees  do  not  try  robbing  then,  usually. 

The  depth  of  our  supers,  as  will  be  seen,  is  greater  than  the 
depth  of  the  supers  popularly  supplied  by  dealers.  This  depth 
was  decided  upon  by  us,  after  due  consideration  and  also  con- 
sultation with  Mr.  Langstroth,  years  ago.  At  that  time,  some 
extracting  supers  were  used  of  the  same  depth  as  the  pound 
sections,  i.  e.  with  frames  Al/i  inches  in  depth.  We  considered 
these  as  mere  playthings,  of  which  too  many  would  be  required 


42  DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

for  the  supers  of  our  large  and  populous  hives.  We  therefore 
made  supers  that  would  supply  frames  with  a  6*4  inch  sidebar, 
6y&  in  the  clear.  These  combs  are  easily  uncapped  at  a  single 
stroke  of  the  knife.  Deeper  frames  are  less  convenient  and 
shallower  ones  insufficient.  Later,  some  manufacturers  made 
supers  with  5J  8  frames.  We  prefer  our  size.  It  contains  about 
?3  of  the  quantity  of  honey  contained  in  a  standard  Langstroth 
frame,  is  much  more  easy  to  handle,  is  uncapped  in  a  single 
stroke  of  the  knife  and  runs  much  less  risk  of  broken  combs, 
when  the  honey  is  fresh,  the  comb  new  and  the  weather  hot. 

For  the  supers,  the  spacing  of  frames  is  still  greater  than  for 
the  brood  combs.  Most  of  our  extracting  supers  contain  9 
frames  only,  spaced  about  lj^  inches  from  center  to  center. 
New  frames  containing  comb  foundation  are  first  spaced  only 
1^2  inches,  as  the  wider  spacing  would  cause  the  building  of 
too  heavy  a  comb  of  honey  which  would  be  frail,  when  new, 
for  handling  and  extracting.  But  after  the  first  extracting,  such 
combs  are  strengthened  by  the  bees  and  may  then  be  spaced  9  to 
a  super  of  16  inches  in  width.  The  \Y\  spacing  gives  us  the  con- 
venience of  thicker  combs  of  honey  and  less  of  them  to  uncap, 
thus  producing  more  honey  with  a  minimum  of  combs  to  handle. 

It  is  well  to  state  here  why  we  make  our  super  only  16 
inches  wide  inside,  while  the  brood  chamber  is  a  half  inch 
wider.  It  is  for  the  purpose  of  fitting  the  cover  or  cap  more 
easily  over  the  supers.  The  half  inch  space  adds  to  the  conven- 
ience. 

As  to  the  slogan' 'Only  one  size  of  frame  in  an  apiary," 
so  popular  among  bee  men,  we  do  not  think  it  concerns  the 
supers.  It  is  no  more  trouble  to  have  full  stories  for  brood 
and  half  stories  for  honey  than  to  have  brood  frames  below  and 
comb-honey  sections  above.  A  number  of  noted  apiarists  of 
the  special  honey-producing  sections  of  the  north  agree  with 
us  fully  in  this.  So  will  the  beekeeper  who  gives  the  matter  a 
fair  trial. 

A  Simplified  Dadant  Hive 

First  of  all,  in  giving  the  possibilities  of  our  system  with 
simplified  hives,  we  agree  that  it  would  have  been  best,  in  adopt- 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


43 


ng  the  Quinby  depth  of  hive,  to  adopt  the  Langstroth  length, 
which  is  iys  inches  shorter.  Not  that  we  believe  the  Quinby- 
Dadant  hive  too  long,  but  because,  had  we  adopted  the  Langs- 
troth   length,   many  manipulations  wouid   have  been  possible 


Fig.  24.    The  story  and  a  half 
Modified  Dadant  hive 


with  a  combination  of  the  two.  Thus,  although  we  do  not 
propose  to  change  the  length  of  our  hives,  after  using  so  many 
during  more  than  a  half  century,  yet  we  are  quite  free  to  advise 
the  use  of  the  hive  called  in  Europe  the  "Dadant-Blatt"  and  in 
this  country  the  "Modified  Dadant." 

But  in  using  a  style  similar  to  the  Jumbo,  we  do  not  recom- 
mend the  narrow  spacing  of  l^i  inches  from  center  to  center 
for  brood  frames  as  made  in  the  Jumbo.  We  insist  on  the 
style  of  spacing  which  we  have  found  very  superior,  already 
mentioned,  of  lH  inches  from  center  to  center,  for  the  brood 
frames.  This  was  already  mentioned  in  the  chapter  on  "frame 
spacing."  In  addition  to  the  advantages  mentioned  there,  we 
will  soon  describe  another  having  to  do  with  swarm  prevention. 
The  bottom  board  of  a  simplified  Dadant  hive  may  be  made 
plain,  as  in  the  common  movable-frame  hives  sold  by  dealers. 


44 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


The  hive  encasing  the  bottom  board  has  the  great  fault, 
the     minds     of     many    apiarists,    to    prevent    the   tiering 

up  of  hive  bodies,  since 
the  projections  would 
keep  the  upper  hive 
from  joining  on  the  lower 
one  and  the  bees  would 
build  comb  between  them. 
This  is  true.  But  we  have 
found  less  need  of  tiering 
up  brood  chambers  than 
the  average  apiarist 
would  imagine.  However, 
we  are  free  to  accept 
this  as  one  of  the  leading 
points  in  the  making  of 
a  simplified  Dadant  brood 
chamber.  We  have  used 
hundreds  ourselves  with 
plain  bottom. 


Fig.  25.  Frames  of  the  Modified  Da- 
dant hive  are  the  same   length 
astheLangstroth  frames,  but 
2yz  inches  deeper 


Fig.  26.    The  Modified  Dadant  hive  has  a  40  per  cent  larger  brood  comb 
area  than  the  10  frame  Langstroth 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF    BEEKEEPING 


45 


« 


] 


The  number  of  frames  should  be  not  less  than  10,  especially 
in  the  modified  style,  which  is  shorter  than  the  regular  Dadant 
and  therefore  contains  a 
less  amount  of  surface. 
The  division  board  should 
be  retained.  This  means 
an  additional  frame  space, 
or  an  eleven  frame  width. 

The  double  back  is 
useful  only  in  localities 
where  the  bees  are  wintered 
out-of-doors,  without 
packing  cases.  Where 
heavy  packing  cases  are 
used  or  where  bees  are 
wintered  in  the  cellar,  it  is 
better  to  have  hives  single- 
wall  all  around.  It  is  an  economy  and  makes  the  hives  lighter 
for  transportation.  The  encased  bottom-board,  Dadant 
fashion,  is  not  indispensable. 


Fig.  27     The  Modified  Dadant  hive 

is  equipped  with  metal  cover  and 

reversible  bottom 


We  would  retain  the 
slat,  outside  of  the  upper 
rabbet,  at  both  ends,  as  it 
costs  but  little  and  makes 
the  supers  so  much  more 
readily  adjustable.  We 
would  also  retain  the  tele- 
scope cover,  for  its  useful- 
ness, if  its  cost  were  not 
objectionable. 


Fig.  28.    Tae  bjdy  is  dovetailed  and  has  eleven  Hoffman  frames  spaced 
1  lA  inches  from  center  to  center 


46 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


Hive  Making 

The  writer  used  to  manufacture  hives  by  hand.    The  fault 
with  such  hives  is  that  they  are  less  accurate  than  those  that  are 


;.  29.     The  regular  Langstroth  body  may  be  used  as  a  super  for  th: 
Modified  Dadant  hive 


made  by  machinery.  We  remember  vividly  the  annoyance 
encountered,  in  the  early  days,  from  having  employed  a  carpenter 
who  carelessly  cut  the  hives  a  quarter  inch  shorter  than  the 
pattern;  so  the  frames  of  one  kind  would  not  fit  in  the  other. 
It  is  very  important  that  everything  be  exactly  of  the  same  size 
and,  when  we  can  afford  it,  we  should  use  factory  made  hives,  or, 
if  we  cannot  make  the  hives  ourselves,  at  least  employ  careful 
help.  We  made  and  used  hundreds  of  hives,  cut  with  a  hand 
saw  and  later  with  a  foot-power  saw.  We  painted  our  hives 
ourselves,  also,  and  did  all  this  work  in  the  dull  season.  We  have 
always  given  the  preference  to  white  pine  for  bodies  and  cypress 
for  bottoms. 

As  for  the  frames,  it  has  never  paid  us  to  try  to  make 
them  by  hand.  Some  styles  of  frames,  such  as  the  Hoffman,  can- 
not even  be  manufactured  in  a  small  saw  mill,  for  it  takes  special 
machinery  to  cut  them  in  a  profitable  manner. 


CHAPTER  5 
Handling  the  Bees 

We  were  already  keeping  bees  on  a  large  scale  before  the  in- 
vention of  a  practical  bee-smoker.  We  used  a  piece  of  punk 
or  of  dry  rotten  wood,  upon  which  we  had  to  blow  in  order  to 
produce  a  sufficient  amount  of  smoke.  The  writer  remembers 
being  often  dizzy  from  blowing  his  breath  upon  the  rotten  wood 
that  he  held  in  his  fingers  and  which  gave  little  enough  smoke 
when  the  bees  were  cross.  The  bellows  smokers,  invented  by 
Quinby  and  improved  by  Bingham,  are  a  greater  boon  than 
our  younger  beekeepers,  who  have  never  had  to  do  without 
them,  can  realize. 

There  are  men  who  are  either  immune  to  bees  or  whom 
the  bees  do  not  sting.  They  handle  them  without  smoke, 
without  veil,  and  seem  to  care  nothing  for  angry  bees.  We 
were  not,  and  we  are  not  yet,  of  that  kind.  The  writer  was  very 
much  afraid  of  bees  in  his  young  days.  It  was  not  until  an 
overwhelming  honey  crop  came  that  he  conquered  his  fear  of 
stings  through  enthusiasm.  So  the  timid  beekeeper  should  take 
courage.  But  we  never  believed  in  handling  bees  without 
smoke,  using  it,  not  plentifully,  but  judiciously,  when  opening 
hives.  Many  an  enemy  has  been  created  to  the  keeping  of  bees, 
in  suburbs,  in  villages,  along  the  public  highway,  by  careless 
handling  of  the  colonies  by  a  beekeeper  who  is  not  afraid.  He 
does  not  get  stung,  but  his  neighbors,  or  the  casual  passer-by, 
are  the  victims.    Allow  us  to  relate  an  incident. 

We  had  a  friend,  now  deceased,  in  the  neighboring  city 
of  Keokuk.  His  home  was  located  on  the  edge  of  the  bluffs, 
with  no  neighbors  between  it  and  the  Mississippi  River  flowing 
below,  200  feqt  away,  an  ideal  place  for  the  avoidance  of  bee 
stings.  But  he  had  neighbors  above  him,  up  the  bluff.  He  was 
in  the  habit  of  opening  his  colonies  without  smoke.  The  bees 
never  stung  him.  He  told  the  writer  one  day  that  he  would  have 
to  sell  his  bees,  a  dozen  colonies  or  so,  because  the  neighbors 
complained  of  stings.  He  could  not  understand  why  they 
should  sting  them,  when  they  did  not  sting  him.     After  this 

47 


48 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


explanation,  we  walked  to  the  apiary  and  he  opened  a  hive 
without  using  any  smoke.  Two  or  three  angry  bees,  instead  of 
stinging  him,  began  to  fly  about  and  attacked  the  neighbor's 
dog,  40  feet  away,  up  a  steep  slope.  I  called  his  attention  to 
this,  advised  him  to  avoid  opening  the  colonies  without  smoke, 
and  from  that  day  on  he  had  no  more  trouble  with  the  neighbors. 
You,  inoculated  beekeepers,  who  are  careless  and  think  every- 
body ought  to  be  as  sting-proof  as  you  are,  take  heed  of  this. 
Consider  other  people's  safety,  if  yours  is  secure,  and  do  not 
handle  your  bees  at  any  time  without  smoke. 

We  always  carry  a  veil.  It  may  be  kept  in  the  pocket, 
but  should  be  always  at  hand,  to  be  used  in  case  of  need. 

We  avoid  disturbing  the  bees  m  cold  weather,  or  in  early 
morning,  or  late  evening.  The  best  time  for  manipulations 
we  consider  to  be  during  the  heat  of  the  day,  when  most  of  the 
old  bees  are  busy  in  the  field. 


- 


J 


Fig.  30.    Home  apiary,  where  we  kept  bees  over  55  years  before  the  pub- 
lication of  this  book 


CHAPTER  6. 
Our  Apiaries 

Our  home  apiary,  where  bees  have  been  kept  continuously 
since  1864,  is  not  in  an  ideal  location  for  honey.  In  fact  it  is 
only  ideal  for  its  sheltered  position,  in  a  gentle  slope  to  the 
southeast,  under  shading  forest  trees,  which  yet  do  not  prevent 


Fig.  31.    A  Dadant  outyard.    The  Poland  Apiary 


the  rays  of  the  morning  sun  from  striking  the  hives.  We  consider 
shade  very  useful,  in  the  hot  summer  climate  of  Illinois.  At 
one  time  we  thought  we  had  too  much,  as  it  had  become  very 
dense.  The  bees  had  had  several  poor  crops  and  we  were  in- 
clined to  ascribe   the  inactivity  of  the  colonies  to  too  much 

49 


50 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


shade.  But  before  we  had  opportunity  to  cut  down  any  of  this 
shade,  (this  was  in  1903)  we  harvested  one  of  the  largest  honey 
crops  that  we  ever  secured.  We  concluded  that  it  is  difficult 
to  place  the  apiary  under  too  much  shade,  in  this  climate.  We 
use  roofs,  made  of  coarse  lumber,  over  the  colonies,  and  we  believe 
that  it  is  profitable,  both  in  the  economy  of  wear  of  the  hive 
lumber  and  in  the  shelter  it  furnishes  the  bees  during  the  warm 
season. 

In  establishing  an  apiary,  we  believe  it  is  necessary  to 
place  the  colonies  in  rows.  But  we  do  not  wish  great  uni- 
formity, great  enough  that  the  workers  and  especially  the 
young    queens    be    unable    to    easily    recognize    their  homes. 


Fig.  32.    Another  Dadant  outyard;  the  Holland  apiary 

With  30  or  40  hives,  of  similar  color  and  shape,  ranged  in  regular 
rows,  without  outsideguide-marks,  there  is  ample  occasion  for  bees 
to  make  a  mistake,  in  their  first  flight,  and  enter  the  wrong 
hive,  on  their  return  home.  It  is  of  little  consequence  with  the 
workers,  unless  too  great  a  number  of  them  should  "drift"  from 
the  weak  colonies  to  the  stronger.    This  is  likely  to  occur  more 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


51 


Fig.  33.    The  LeMaire  apiary  of  the  Dadant  outyard  system 


1 

IK,' 

■ 

ts 

lili^Wl 

■    * 

«e 

F/g.  J-/.    The  Milliken  outyard  of  the  Dadant  system 


52  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPIXC 

or  less.  But  the  greater  danger  is  when  a  young  queen,  return- 
ing from  her  mating  flight,  enters  the  wrong  home.  She  is  almost 
certain  to  be  put  to  death,  if  the  colony  which  she  enters  by 
error  is  queenright.  Then  her  own  colony  becomes  hopelessly 
queenless,  unless,  as  is  rarely  the  case,  they  still  have  sealed 
queen-cells  from  which  they  may  rear  a  new  queen.  At  best, 
the  colony  suffering  from  that  accident  is  very  much  delayed  in 
its  breeding. 

For  this  reason,  we  like  to  arrange  our  colonies  so  that 
every  few  feet,  there  will  be  some  noticeable  mark,  such  as  a 
tree,  a  bush,  or  a  greater  space  between  hives.  It  is  sufficient 
to  call  the  beekeeper's  attention  to  this,  so  that  he  may  go  to 
the  trouble  of  arranging  the  colonies  in  such  a  way  as  to  avoid 
the  "drifting."  Painting  the  hives  of  different  colors  is  a  good 
way.  But  dark  colors  are  objectionable,  as  they  are  too  hot 
in  summer,  and  light  colors  soon  fade.  We  know  this  by  long 
experience. 

Outapiaries 

We  have  had  outapiaries  since  1870.  They  have  been  located 
in  all  sorts  of  spots,  near  the  Mississippi  River,  where  the  water 
cutaway  half  of  the  pasture;  in  timber  land;  on  the  open  prairie, 
among  corn  fields  and  wheat  fields;  on  the  lowlands  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi, where  only  fall  blossoms  abound;  and  along  the  Illinois 
River,  in  a  similar  position.  We  did  not  find  any  ideal  spot. 
There  are  advantages  to  each  location  and  disadvantages  as 
well.  We  hauled  bees,  in  the  heat  of  the  summer,  on  hay  racks, 
a  distance  of  25  miles,  when  it  was  necessary  to  travel  nearly 
all  night  to  avoid  the  exposure  of  the  hives  to  August  sunshine. 
Nowadays,  when  we  transport  bees  to  the  lowlands,  we  use  a 
motor  truck  and  the  trip  which  occupied  8  hours,  in  1881,  is  now 
made  in  a  trifle  over  two  hours.  The  younger  generation  will 
indeed  never  realize  the  hardships  that  the  grandfathers  had  to 
face.  But  our  young  generations  are  accepting  tasks  that  we 
could  never  have  dreamed  of  and  their  hardships  may  prove  equal 
to  ours,  after  all. 

It  is  hardly  within  the  scope  of  this  book  to  dwell  largely 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


53 


Fig.  35.     The  Koch  outapiary  of  the  Dadant  System  is  located  on  the 
edge  of  the  Mississippi  bottoms 


on  outapiaries.  We  refer  the  reader  to  the  work  "Outapiaries" 
by  M.  G.  Dadant,  son  of  the  writer,  whose  present  experience  in 
that  line  is  quite  active.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  we  have  found, 
within  a  distance  of  four  miles,  a  difference  in  quality,  color,  and 
quantity  of  honey  harvested.  This  shows  that  bees,  in  this 
locality  at  least,  do  not  usually  travel  much  over  2  miles  in 
search  of  honey. 


CHAPTER  7. 
Apiary  Management — Spring 

One  of  the  early  requirements  to  which  we  attend  in 
apiary  management  is  to  ascertain  that  our  hives  are  plumb, 
from  side  to  side.  From  front  to  rear,  we  want  a  little  slope 
towards  the  entrance,  so  that  the  bees  will  have  less  difficulty 
in  removing  rubbish,  dead  bees,  &c.     It  is  also  useful  in  keeping 


Fig.  36.     Another  Dadant  outapiary  located  on  the  edge  of  the  Missis- 
sippi bottoms.    The  Sack  yard 

out  the  rain  water  and  the  melting  snow.  Where  we  have 
cement  blocks  for  hive  stands,  there  is  less  danger  of  the  hives 
becoming  displaced  in  winter  than  where  they  stand  on  wooden 
blocks. 

The  first  spring  examination  is  cursory.     We  make  it  when 
the  bees  are  taking  one  of  their  first  flights.     The  purpose  is 

55 


56  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

to  ascertain  whether  they  have  sufficient  stores  to  carry  them 
to  fruit  bloom,  and  to  clean  out  the  dead  bees  from  deceased 
colonies  and  close  them,  so  that  neither  robbers  nor  moths  may 
enter. 

Queenless  colonies  are  not  looked  for  until  the  second 
visit,  shortly  before  fruit  bloom.  The  weak,  queenless  colonies 
are  united  with  others,  lifting  their  combs  bodily,  in  a  cool, 
evening,  to  place  them  behind  the  division  board  of  a  queenright 
but  comparatively  weak  colony  which  does  not  occupy  its  entire 
hive  and  will  be  benefited  by  the  help.  If  both  colonies  have  been 
given  a  little  light  food,  there  is  no  fight. 

We  have  also  found  the  newspaper  plan  of  uniting  bees,  given 
by  Dr.  Miller,  a  very  good  method.  It  is  used  quite  generally. 
During  a  cool  night,  place  one  of  the  colonies,  to  be  united, 
over  the  other,  separating  them  with  a  newspaper  and  closing  all 
entrances  except  that  of  the  lower  hive.  The  bees  gnaw  the 
paper  slowly  and  generally  unite  peaceably. 

If  the  queenless  colonies  are  not  weak, as  some  times happei  s, 
we  give  them  a  queen  purchased  from  a  reliable  Southern 
breeder.  We  used  to  rear  our  own  supersedure  queens  and  it  is 
a  desirable  thing  to  do.  But  we  have  been  too  busy,  for  years 
past,  to  spend  any  time  at  this  work,  which  requires  special 
conditions.  Southern  breeders,  if  they  are  active  and  honest, 
and  there'  are  many  such,  can  rear  good  queens  by  the  time  our 
bees  awaken  from  winter  rest. 

As  a  breeder  is  not  always  able  to  supply  queens  on  short 
notice,  we  are  in  the  habit  of  placing  an  approximate  order, 
for  an  approximate  time,  early  enough  to  get  a  part  at  least, 
of  the  queens  we  will  need. 

Since  we  have  gone  into  the  keeping  of  over  500  colonies 
of  bees,  we  have  taken  less  pains  to  save  a  colony  which  comes 
out  of  the  winter  queenless.  Yet,  taking  it  all  in  all,  it  is  not  a 
bad  idea  to  keep  this  colony  going  if  we  wish  to  avoid  having 
empty  spots  in  the  apiary.  W7e  have  often  helped  such  a  colony 
with  a  comb  of  brood,  early,  then  used  it  as  we  might  use  an 
empty  hive,  in  making  a  division,  late  in  May.  This  is  hardly 
profitable,  however. 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  57 

When  we  wish  to  examine  the  hives  for  the  removal  of 
drone-combs,  and  the  replacing  of  them  with  worker-combs, 
which  we  consider  of  great  importance,  in  all  but  the  hives 
which  we  select  as  drone  producers,  and  when  we  have  transfers 
to  make,  as  happens  nearly  every  year,  of  crooked  combs 
caused  by  accidents,  or  of  box  hives  purchased  from  old-fashioned 
beekeepers,  which  we  aim  to  secure  in  order  to  do  away  with 
box-hive  beekeeping,  this  work  is  done  during  early  fruit  bloom. 
At  that  time,  the  colonies  have  the  least  bees  and  the  least  honey 
and  are  more  easily  handled  without  danger  of  robbing.  Methods 
of  transfer  of  the  combs  of  box  hives  are  given  at  length  in  "The 
Hive  &  Honey  Bee." 

In  this  locality,  a  long  interval  of  honey  dearth  exists 
between  fruit  bloom  and  the  first  yield  of  the  real  honey  crop, 
white  clover.  This  is  not  the  case  in  many  other  locations, 
in  which  some  bloom  or  other  fills  the  gap.  During  that  interval, 
it  is  necessary  to  look  after  the  bees,  for  they  often  decrease 
their  laying  in  a  serious  manner.  It  may  be  necessary  to  feed 
them  and  it  is  profitable  to  do  so.  But  this  is  irregular,  so 
our  system  of  action  depends  very  much  upon  circumstances. 
Rarely,  the  fruit  bloom  has  yielded  sufficiently  to  induce  them 
to  continue  breeding  until  the  first  clover  blossoms  appear. 
Our  action,  at  this  time,  depends  upon  those  conditions.  But  we 
find  it  indispensable,  at  any  cost,  to  keep  the  bees  breeding. 
As  Mr.  Geo.  S.  Demuth,  of  the  Bureau  of  Entomology,  puts  it 
so  clearly,  "we  must  raise  our  bees  for  the  honey  crop  and  not 
upon  the  honey  crop."  The  following  of  the  above  axiom,  for 
years,  has  probably  been  the  most  positive  reason  of  our  success 
in  beekeeping. 

The  Honey  Crop 

We  have  had  a  number  of  seasons  when  the  white  clover, 
whose  bloom  forms  the  principal  crop  of  our  locality,  was  en- 
tirely killed  by  the  drought  of  the  previous  season.  In  such 
years,  we  are  pleased  if  our  bees  make  enough  to  support  them- 
selves till  the  fall  harvest.  It  is  during  those  years  that  we  aim  to 
make  increase,  for  we  have  bees  in  plenty  and  little  for  them  to  do. 


58  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

Increase 

We  do  not  believe  in  natural  swarming.  So  we  do  every- 
thing that  will  tend  to  prevent  it.  Although  "bees  never  do 
things  invariably,"  as  very  truly  said  by  Dr.  C.  C.  Miller, 
we  have  very  little  swarming,  little  enough  to  render  it  un- 
important and  the  watching  for  swarms  a  negligible  matter.  This 
is  of  importance  to  us,  since  we  are  constantly  busy  at  a  variety 
of  labor,  for  we  are  not  only  beekeepers,  but  also  dealers  in  bee 
goods  and  makers  of  comb  foundation,  with  a  large  force  of 
men  under  our  direction.  It  is  also  very  important  not  to  be 
required  to  keep  a  watchman  at  each  outapiary.  It  is  true 
that  there  are  seasons  when  the  bees  get  ahead  of  us  and  when 
it  might  pay  to  keep  a  watchman  at  each  apiary.  But  these 
seasons  are  rare.  In  50  years  past,  we  have  remembrance  of 
only  two,  when  the  bees  got  so  far  ahead  of  us  that  we  had 
swarms,  in  great  numbers,  that  were  not  cared  for.  A  little 
farther  along  we  will  give  our  method  of  preventing  swarming. 
We  will  first  give  our  method  of  making  increase. 

We  stated,  in  the  chapter  on  spring  management,  that  we 
do  not  now  rear  our  own  queens.  But  as  we  have  reared  queens 
for  increase,  at  one  time,  we  will  indicate  the  method  which 
we  followed  when  neither  the  Doolittle  method,  nor  the  still  more 
modern  Barbeau  method,  were  in  use.  The  apiarist  who  wishes 
to  rear  queens,  in  the  most  modern  way,  should  refer  to  special 
works  on  queen-rearing. 

Queens  for  Increase 

In  early  spring  we  remove  as  much  as  possible,  all  drone- 
comb  from  the  colonies,  except  from  two  or  three  which  we  desire 
as  drone  breeders.  These  are  among  our  best  honey  producers  of 
the  previous  year.  We  want  them  pure  Italians,  because 
both  past  experience  and  breeding  theories  indicate  that  hybrids, 
however  good  they  may  prove  as  honey  producers,  do  not 
transmit  their  qualities  so  invariably  as  a  pure  race. 

We  also  prefer  pure  Italians  to  other  foreign  races,  because 
with  the  Italian  we  can  readily  recognize   the  least  amount  of 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


59 


foreign  blood,  while  with  recognized  good  races  of  so-called 
gray  bees,  such  as  the  Carniolan  or  the  Caucasian,  it  is  very 
difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  detect  a  small  mixture  of  the  com- 
mon black  bee.  The  Italians,  to  our  mind,  have  so  thoroughly 
proved  their  worth,  that  we  seek  no  further  than  pure  bees  of 
that  race.     Imported  Italians  have  been  our  best  bees. 

With  the  method  of  removing  drone  combs  from  unde- 
sirable colonies,  we  secure  a  very  large  percentage  of  good 
matings,  for  the  colonies  from  which  drone-combs  have  been 
taken  rarely  rear  more  than  200  to  300  drones,  while  we  secure 
several  thousands  in  our  selected  colonies  by  placing  drone  combs 
in  the  center  of  the  brood  nest. 

We  also  select  two  of  our  best  queens  for  queen  producers. 
When  the  time  comes,  at  the  opening  of  what  we  call  the  honey 


** 


'***• 


99     a 


Fig.  37.     Queen-cells  hang  downwards  and  are  built  preferable  in  open 
spaces  on  new  comb 


60  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

harvest,  we  make  a  good  colony  queenless  and  exchange  its 
brood  for  a  less  number  of  combs  of  brood  from  one  of  these  best 
queens.  By  giving  them  a  less  number  than  they  had  of  their 
own,  we  make  sure  that  the  queen-cells  reared  will  be  well 
cared  for. 

To  secure  a  large  number  of  fine  queen-cells,  we  might 
follow  the  Alley  plan,  or  the  Dolittle  plan,  but  these  belong  to 
commercial  queen-rearing  and  we  will  not  describe  them.  They 
are  described  in  the  Hive  &  Honey  Bee  and  also  in  Pellet's 
Practical  Queen  Rearing.  A  very  good  method  is  to  supply  our 
breeding  queens,  3  or  4  days  ahead,  with  new  combs  or  comb 
foundation  cut  with  rounding  edges  at  intervals,  for  the  easy 
production  of  queen-cells  by  the  bees.  When  these  combs  are 
full  of  eggs  and  young  larvae  less  than  3  days  old,  they  are  just 
right  for  our  queen-rearing. 

Queen-cells  hang  downward  fron  the  combs.  For  that 
reason,  the  bees,  for  greater  ease,  build  them  at  the  lower  edge 
of  the  combs,  or  in  open  spots  among  the  brood.  If  we  supply 
the  queenless  hive  with  young  brood,  less  than  3  days  old, 
and  eggs,  in  combs  that  are  fresh  and  only  partly  built,  there 
are  numerous  opportunities  for  the  building  of  queen-cells  in 
the  empty  spaces.  So  a  much  greater  number  of  queen-cells  are 
built  upon  such  combs.  It  is  nothing  rare  to  have  as  many  as 
50  or  60  queen-cells  on  one  or  two  frames  of  such  comb. 

The  queenless  colony  to  wrhich  these  combs  are  given, 
immediately  builds  queen-cells,  especially  if  it  is  fed  with 
very  thin  sugar  syrup,  in  case  the  crop  is  not  yielding.  Upon 
the  ninth  day,  after  the  insertion  of  the  combs,  the  cells  should 
be  counted  and  as  many  divisions  of  other  colonies  may  be  made 
as  the  number  of  cells  that  may  be  cut  apart,  save  one  which  is 
to  remain  in  the  queenless  colony.  We  often  divide  the  queenless 
colony  itself  into  3  or  4  parts,  closing  up  the  parts  that  are 
to  be  placed  on  a  new  spot,  in  new  hives,  often  carrying  them  to 
a  cellar  or  to  some  cool  place,  till  the  next  day.  We  take  good 
care  to  leave  more  young  bees  in  the  portions  removed  to  new 
hives  and  new  spots  than  in  the  hive  on  the  old  stand.  We 
confine   them     to   the  space   actually   occupied,   with   division 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


61 


Fig.  38.    A  small  colony  is  confined  to  such  space  as  it  can  cover,  by  the 
use  of  a  division  board 

boards.  Other  divisions  are  made  in  different  ways,  according 
to  circumstances.  We  may  take  only  2  or  3  frames  from  a  full 
colony,  with  a  large  number  of  young  bees,  treating  them 
in  the  same  way  as  those  above  mentioned.  Or  we  may  divide 
2  colonies  to  make  one  swarm,  taking  the  brood  from  one  and 
leaving  the  bees  with  the  queen  on  the  old  stand,  and  taking  the 
bees  from  the  other  by  placing  the  division  thus  made  on  the 
stand  of  the  second  colony  and  removing  it  to  a  new  spot. 
The  colonies  that  are  made  from  only  2  or  3  frames  of  brood 
and  bees,  will  need  to  be  helped  later  with  more  brood  and 
perhaps  more  bees,  while  those  that  are  built  from  2  other  hives 
are  at  once  as  powerful  as  the  latter.  The  2  or  3-frame  colonies, 
narrowed  to  such  a  space  as  they  can  cover,  with  a  division 
board,  may  be  called  "nuclei,"  while  the  others  are  at  once  full 
colonies.     The   method   of   procedure    depends    entirely    upon 


62  DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

whether  we  wish  to  make  much  or  little  increase  from  the  colonies 
at  hand.  It  also  depends  upon  the  question  of  whether  we 
expect  to  secure  honey  from  our  bees  during  that  crop.  If  we  do, 
then  we  divide  the  lesser  colonies  into  small  nuclei,  keeping  all 
our  best  colonies  for  honey  production.  We  ascertained  that 
middling  strong  colonies,  which  may  not  be  ready  for  the  harvest 
in  time,  are  much  more  economical  for  the  making  of  increase, 
than  powerful  ones,  as  many  of  their  bees  will  be  reared  "ow 
the  crop"  instead  of  "for  the  crop." 

The  reader  remembers  that  we  make  these  divisions  on  the 
ninth  day  after  making  our  colony  queenless.  This  is  because 
the  young  queens,  ordinarily,  begin  to  hatch  towards  the  end 
of  the  10th  day  and  we  must  insert  a  queen-cell  in  each  of  those 
artificial  swarms  before  the  end  of  the  tenth  day.  If  we  inserted 
the  queen-cells  at  once,  on  the  ninth  day,  or  waited  till  the  tenth 
day  to  make  our  divisions,  many  of  those  cells  would  be  destroyed 
by  swarms  that  would  not  have  yet  ascertained  their  queen- 
lessness.  But  on  the  tenth  day,  or  about  24  hours  after  making 
the  divisions,  our  small  swarms  are  brought  from  the  confine- 
ment where  they  were  placed  and  a  queen-cell  inserted  in  each, 
in  the  middle  of  the  brood  combs,  in  the  warmest  spot.  The 
young  queen  hatches  promptly,  sometimes  the  same  evening, 
usually  within  3  or  4  days,  and  in  another  week  will  be  fertil- 
ized and  laying. 

When  we  make  divisions,  if  we  moved  the  queenless  part 
to  a  vacant  spot  and  released  the  bees  at  once,  many  would 
go  back  to  the  mother  hive  or,  if  too  young,  might  join  some 
queenright  colonies;  for  a  new  home  without  a  queen,  has 
little  attraction  for  them.  Dr.  Miller  and  many  others  advise 
leaving  the  swarm  thus  made  in  the  apiary,  closing  its  entrance 
with  a  bunch  of  grass. 

As  we  have  had  several  colonies  smothered  when  following 
this  method,  we  prefer  to  remove  the  hives  to  the  cellar  over- 
night. This  experience  in  the  smothering  of  colonies  is  probably 
due  to  the  heat  of  the  climate  in  this  locality.  By  morning,  when 
we  remove  them  to  a  new  spot  and  insert  a  queen-cell  we  have 
no  trouble  and  the  bees  seem  sufficientlv  reconciled  to  the  condi- 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  63 

tions  to  remain,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  of  the  old  field  work- 
ers who  return  to  the  old  stand.  If  the  swarm  has  been  made 
with  an  excess  of  young  bees,  there  is  no  trouble. 

Of  course,  the  ideal  method  is  to  make  one  increase  from 
2  colonies,  as  all  three  are  strong  at  once  and  the  damage  suffered 
by  the  colonies  that  have  furnished  this  increase  is  shown  only 
in  the  lack  of  honey  yield. 

It  is  in  either  one  of  these  manners  that  we  have  increased 
our  colonies,  at  all  times,  for  we  have  never  liked  natural  swarm- 
ing. It  is  now  time  for  us  to  state  in  what  manner  we  prevent 
natural  swarms. 


CHAPTER  8 
Swarm  Prevention  and  Supering 

There  are  many  methods  in  vogue  for  the  prevention  of 
swarming,  but  they  are  nearly  all  by  manipulations  which  re- 
quire a  great  deal  of  time,  at  the  busiest  season.  The  method 
which  we  sustain  as  best  and  which  we  here  describe  requires 
no  active  manipulations  during  the  honey-gathering  period, 
outside  of  the  usually  necessary  ones,  and  is  what  might  properly 
be  called  a  "let  alone"  method. 

As  early  as  1870,  we  found  ourselves  with  a  sufficient  num- 
ber of  colonies  to  make  swarming  undesirable.  Besides  the 
objectionable  increase  in  numbers,  swarming  caused  an  increase 
of  labor  when  we  were  busiest.  The  method  which  we  then 
adopted  has  been  in  constant  use  by  us  since,  with  additional 
improvements.  We  do  not  claim  that  swarming  can  be  pre- 
vented altogether,  neither  do  we  claim  that  it  is  as  easy  to  avoid 
it  in  the  production  of  comb  honey  as  in  that  of  extracted  honey. 
But  the  success  of  our  management  during  numerous  honey 
crops  is  ample  evidence  that  the  principles  enunciated  below 
are  in  the  right  direction.  The  season  of  1916  gave  us  more 
positive  evidence  of  its  success,  as  compared  to  other  methods. 
Out  of  about  525  colonies,  spring  count,  we  gathered  less  than 
30  swarms,  but  harvested  over  200  pounds  of  honey  per  colony, 
while  a  neighbor  of  ours,  less  than  two  miles  from  our  home 
apiary,  gathered  12  swarms  from  five  colonies,  owing  to  his 
neglect  of  proper  attendance  to  their  needs.  The  requirements 
are  as  follows: 

1.  An  ample  brood-chamber  for  the  needs  of  a  prolific 
queen.  If  the  queen  finds  herself  confined  to  a  scanty  lower 
story  by  excluders  or  otherwise,  she  will  make  it  known  to  the 
bees  or  they  will  instinctively  notice  it  themselves  and  prepare 
queen-cells.  The  very  large  hives,  large  brood-chambers,  and 
easily  accessible  supers,  that  we  use,  are  favorable  to  a  non- 
swarming  disposition. 

But  even  with  an  8-frame  hive,  the  prolific  queens  may  be 
accommodated.    Doctor  C.  C.  Miller  uses  a  second  brood-cham- 

65 


66  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

ber  for  prolific  queens  and  removes  this  at  the  opening  of  the 
crop,  leaving  in  the  lower  brood-chamber  the  best  brood-combs. 
In  some  way,  the  queen  should  be  accommodated  during  the 
heavy  breeding  season,  and  especially  at  the  opening  of  the  crop. 
As  an  outcome  of  the  first  proposition,  there  must  be  ample 
room  for  stores.  Some  beginners  are  astonished  to  see  old  prac- 
titioners, like  Dr.  Miller,  giving  their  bees  as  many  as  three 
supers  at  one  time,  on  a  strong  colony.  But  if  the  queen  is  very 
prolific,  and  has  been  breeding  plentifully  as  nature  dictates, 
her  colony  may  be  able  to  work  in  each  of  two  or  three  supers 
as  strongly  as  they  would  work  in  one. 

2.  The  use  of  comb  foundation  in  full  sheets  in  the  supers 
when  working  for  comb  honey,  or  of  fully  built  combs  in  extract- 
ing supers,  has  also  a  great  deal  of  influence,  upon  the  prevention 
of  swarming.  True,  full  combs  are  much  more  efficient  in  this, 
but  comb  foundation  aids  greatly.  There  are  days  when  the 
crop  is  so  heavy  that  all  the  available  cells  are  at  once  filled 
with  nectar.  If  the  bees  have  to  build  combs  and  thus  find  them- 
selves crowded  for  room  to  deposit  their  loads,  swarming  may 
ensue.  But  with  full  sheets  of  foundation  in  every  section,  the 
work  of  comb  building  is  much  simplified  and  the  necessity 
of  producing  sufficient  wax  reduced.  Of  course,  it  is  understood 
that  the  supers  have  been  supplied  to  the  bees  before  they  found 
themselves  crowded  for  space,  for  if  the  swarming  impulse  is 
once  gained,  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  overcome  it  by  any  man- 
ipulations whatever. 

3.  It  will  be  entirely  useless  to  expect  the  bees  to  remain 
contented  and  fill  the  supers,  if  the  ventilation  of  the  hive  is 
inadequate  to  the  requirements  of  the  enlarged  population. 
All  observers  have  noticed  the  great  tax  imposed  upon  them  by 
the  simultaneous  increase  of  heat  and  discomfort  brought  about 
by  a  summer  temperature  and  a  daily  addition  of  some  2,000 
or  3,000  or  more  hatching  bees  to  the  population  of  powerful 
colonies.  Yet  many  beekeepers  do  not  think  of  enlarging  the 
means  of  ventilation.  Thousands  of  colonies  are  compelled  to 
leave  a  large  part  of  their  population  idle,  hanging  on  the  out- 
side of  the  hive  for  davs  and  sometimes  for  weeks,  because  they 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


67 


are  unable  to  sufficiently  ventilate  the  inside  of  the  brood-cham- 
ber and  supers.  We  must  remember  that  every  corner,  every 
story  of  a  hive  is  in  absolute  need  of  a  current  of  fresh  air  which 
is  supplied  at  great  pains  by  establishing  a  line  of  fanning  bees, 
incessantly  forcing  pure  air  in  and  foul  air  out.  Yet  in  many 
colonies  there  may  be  but  a  shallow  entrance,  partly  closed  by 


Fig.  39.    Supers  set  back  for  ventilation  in  hot  weather 


68  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

clustering  bees,  and  perhaps  on  the  inside  above  the  brood- 
combs  there  may  be  some  partitions,  queen-excluders,  separators, 
honey-boards,  etc.,  all  in  the  way  of  ventilation.  We  raise  our 
hives  from  the  bottom,  in  front,  from  one  to  two  inches,  v  hen 
there  is  a  likelihood  of  the  bees  being  unable  to  ventilate  other- 
wise. We  have  even  set  the  supers  back  a  half  inch  or  so,  during 
the  hottest  days,  to  secure  a  current  of  air  through  the  brood- 
chamber  in  very  hot  weather.  But  this  must  not  be  continued 
too  long,  for  it  might  interfere  with  the  storing  of  honey  in  the 
forward  part  of  the  supers  if  the  weather  changed.  The  bottom 
ventilation,  however,  must  be  ample,  ample  enough  in  fact  to 
allow  all  the  bees  to  work,  so  that  none  will  remain  clustering 
on  the  outside  during  the  continuation  of  the  honey  crop. 

4.  As  help  to  ventilation  and  comfort  by  decreasing  the 
heat,  a  good  roof  is  needed  when  the  hives  are  exposed  to  the 
sun.  We  use  coarse  roofs  on  our  hives,  as  stated  before,  even 
when  they  are  located  in  the  shade  of  trees.  Our  roofs  are  made 
very  cheaply  of  large  discarded  dry  goods  boxes  and  are  flat. 
They  are  cleated  with  2x2  inch  scantling  on  the  rear  underside 
and  a  1x2  inch  strip  under  the  front  end.  This  secures  a  slope 
of  an  inch,  which  may  be  turned  the  other  way  to  shed  water 
in  rear.  The  roofs  are  much  wider  than  the  hive  and  shelter 
the  top  from  the  effects  of  the  weather. 

5.  The  queen  must  be  young.  Some  beekeepers  believe 
in  requeening  every  season  after  the  honey  crop.  We  do  not 
believe  in  so  radical  a  measure.  In  fact,  we  would  not  feel  cap- 
able of  killing  a  first-class  queen  after  only  one  season  of  use. 
But  we  do  believe  in  keeping  only  prolific  queens  and  if  the  queen 
has  proven  under  grade  she  should  be  replaced.  Old  queens  that 
are  losing  their  fertility  are  a  frequent  source  of  swarming.  The 
workers  prepare  to  supersede  them,  by  rearing  queen-cells,  just 
as  soon  as  they  notice  their  reduced  laying.  The  old  queen  in 
a  pique  leaves  with  a  swarm.  So  we  must  replace  our  old  queens 
every  fall  or  late  summer. 

6.  A  large  number  of  drones  is  an  incentive  to  swarming. 
Some  of  the  old-time  beekeepers  thought  the  drones  were  bene- 
ficial because  the  colonies  having  many  drones  swarm  readily. 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  69 

They  considered  swarming  a  desirable  thing.  So  it  was,  when 
dividing  or  artificial  increase  was  unknown.  They  also  thought 
as  already  stated,  that  the  drones  were  useful  in  keeping  the 
brood  warm.  So  they  would  be  if  they  did  not  have  to  be  kept 
warm  themselves  when  they  are  reared  and  also  if  the  bees  did 
not  kill  them,  as  they  are  sure  to  do,  in  bad  weather. 

There  is  not  any  doubt  that  the  excess  of  drones  in  the  hive 
promotes  swarming.  Those  big,  noisy  fellows  remain  in  the  way, 
all  day  long,  except  for  a  flight  during  the  warmest  hours,  being 
then  still  more  in  the  way  of  the  active  workers.  Although,  as 
Dr.  Bruennich  says,  there  is  a.  certain  fondness  of  the  workers 
for  the  drones,  during  the  crop,  which  changes  to  hate  after- 
wards when  they  see  them  helping  themselves  from  their  hard 
earned  stores,  yet  their  numbers  make  for  discomfort  and  a 
crowded  condition. 

In  a  state  of  nature,  according  to  the  best  authorities,  bees 
build  from  one-seventh  to  one-tenth  of  their  combs  of  drone 
size,  in  the  brood-chamber.  If  only  one-twentieth  of  the  combs 
of  a  normal  colony  were  filled  with  drone-brood,  this  would 
supply  nearly  2,500  drones  per  colony.  We  should  permit  only 
two  or  three  of  our  very  best  breeders  to  rear  so  large  a  number 
of  drones,  for  5,000  to  10,000  drones  are  enough  for  any  apiary. 

Some  beekeepers  see  no  way  to  destroy  drones  but  to  use 
a  drone-trap.  That  is  to  say,  during  the  busiest,  warmest  season, 
when  their  bees  need  the  greatest  amount  of  ventilation,  they 
place  in  front  of  the  entrance  a  cage  made  to  catch  drones  and 
queens,  the  very  worst  encumbrance  that  may  be  devised,  for 
the  sake  of  catching  the  drones  as  they  emerge,  having  to  remove 
them  every  evening  or  suffer  the  odor  and  encumbrance  of  dead 
drones  in  front  of  each  hive. 

It  is  probably  impossible  to  rjear  no  drones  at  all,  but  if 
we  remove  all  the  drone-comb,  early  in  the  season,  as  nearly 
as  we  can,  and  replace  it  with  worker-comb,  there  will  be  drones 
reared  only  in  imperfect  cells  here  and  there  or  in  out-of-the-way 
corners.  Instead  of  rearing  2,000  or  more,  we  will  perhaps  rear 
200  or  less  in  each  colony,  a  very  important  difference  when  we 
consider  the  comfort  of  the  colony.    Remember  that  if  we  leave 


70  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

the  bees  to  their  own  devices,  when  we  remove  the  drone-comb 
in  early  spring  they  will  be  sure  to  build  drone-comb  in  the  same 
spot.  So  it  is  important  to  replace  it  with  worker-comb. 

There  are  instances,  however,  of  bees  building  drone-comb 
on  imperfect  worker  foundation.  They  are  rare  and  are  usually 
due  to  some  defect  of  the  foundation,  which  may  have  been 
stretched  slightly  in  laminating.  At  a  meeting  of  the  beekeepers 
of  Middlebury,  Vt.,  in  the  summer  of  1916,  Mr.  Crane  men- 
tioned having  had  about  a  dozen  sheets  of  foundation  thus 
changed,  out  of  some  2,000  used  by  him  in  1915.  These  are  only 
accidents.  Accidents  also  are  instances  of  bees  building  drone- 
cells  on  one  side  of  the  comb,  wrhile  worker-cells  are  on  the  oppo- 
site side.  In  such  a  case  the  regular  base  is  not  followed  and  the 
cells  lap  over,  showing  plainly  that  they  were  irregularly  built. 
Mr.  Latham  exhibited  to  us  two  square  inches  of  such  comb 
during  the  summer  of  1916.  Such  combs  should  be  remelted 
and  replaced  by  well  built  combs. 

When  we  replace  the  drone-comb  with  worker-comb  in 
all  but  our  best  colonies,  we  do  away  with  undesirable  drones 
for  the  mating  of  the  queens.  We  save  food  which  would  be 
wasted  on  these  undesirable  beings,  since  the  drone  costs  at 
least  one-half  more  to  rear  than  a  worker,  and  has  to  be  fed  as 
long  as  he  lives. 

Replace  the  drone-comb  with  worker-comb,  as  much  as 
possible  in  your  hives,  early  in  the  season,  and  you  will  have 
much  less  to  fear  of  the  swarming  fever. 

7.  The  last  condition  which  we  can  mention  in  the  success- 
ful prevention  of  swarming  is  one  which  we  have  been  using  for 
years,  but  which  we  did  not  think  of  in  that  connection  until  the 
matter  was  brought  to  our  attention  by  Mr.  Allan  Latham, 
in  1916.  In  exhibiting  a  hive  at  the  Storrs  meeting,  Mr.  Latham 
made  the  remark  that  the  1  3-8  inch  spacing  of  combs,  from 
center  to  center,  in  common  use,  was  a  promoter  of  swarming. 
We  have  used  the  Quinby  spacing  of  1  1-2  inches  ever  since  1866. 
The  bees  work  as  satisfactorily  with  the  one  spacing  as  with 
the  other.  In  fact,  the  original  advisors  of  either  mode  of  spacing 
had  no  very  positive  argument  to  advance  in  favor  of  their 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  71 

method.  But  the  11-2  inch  spacing  gives  1-8  of  an  inch  addi- 
tional between  all  the  combs  for  the  bees  to  cluster  or  move 
about  during  the  breeding  season.  This  multiplied  by  the  height 
and  length  of  the  hive  and  by  the  number  of  frames  gives  an 
addition  of  162  cubic  inches  of  clustering  space  or  ventilation, 
as  the  case  may  be.  Think  of  the  large  number  of  bees  which 
may  be  accommodated  in  such  a  space. 

The  standard  hives  of  the  present  day  are  nearly  all  of  the 
narrow  kind.  Nevertheless,  the  broader  spacing  is  much  the 
better,  for  the  above  named  reason  and  also  because  it  gives 
easier  manipulation  and  more  clustering  space  for  the  colony 
in  winter.  As  we  have  said,  we  used  the  wider  spacing  for  years, 
but  did  not  realize  that  our  success  in  swarm  prevention  was  in 
part  due  to  this  spacing.  It  is  undoubtedly  of  great  advantage 
in  the  prevention  of  swarming. 

Let  it  not  be  understood  that  we  lay  any  claims  to  the  total 
prevention  of  swarming.  That  is  a  goal  perhaps  never  to  be 
attained.  Neither  do  we  lay  any  claim  to  breeding  a  non-swarm- 
ing strain.  But  when  some  of  our  most  practical  beekeepers, 
such  as  we  have  met  in  the  East,  acknowledge,  as  one  did,  having 
had  as  many  as  18  swarms  out,  at  the  same  hour,  in  one  apiary, 
we  believe  there  is  need  generally  of  a  more  thorough  understand- 
ing of  the  causes  of  natural  swarming. 

The  advantages  of  this  method  consist  in  doing  away  with 
numerous  hive  manipulations  during  the  honey  crop,  such  as 
cutting  out  queen-cells,  taking  out  brood,  shifting  colonies, 
returning  swarms  to  the  old  hive,  etc.  All  the  required  work, 
outside  of  increasing  the  opportunities  for  ventilation  and  adding 
supers,  has  to  be  done  during  the  dull  season.  We  know  that 
those  who  have  excessive  swarming,  if  they  try  these  conditions, 
will  find  themselves  greatly  relieved  by  the  results.  Besides, 
they  may  be  able  to  discover  additional  requirements,  for  there 
is  always  something  more  to  be  learned.  If  we  are  to  judge  of 
future  progress  by  the  past,  there  are  endless  opportunities  for 
more  knowledge,  endless  chances  for  progress. 


72  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


Putting  on  Supers 

We  have  said  enough  in  previous  pages  to  suggest  that  we 
are  specialists  in  extracted  honey  production.  The  supers  that 
we  use  indicate  it.  We  believe  that  enough  more  honey  may  be 
secured,  from  combs  built  previously,  to  much  more  than  make 
up  for  the  difference  in  price  between  comb-honey  and  extracted 
honey. 

Every  practical  beekeeper  knows  that  beeswax  is  produced 
in  the  body  of  the  worker-bee,  by  special  organs  acting  much 
in  the  way  of  milk  production  in  the  cow,  or  in  the  production 
of  fat  by  animals  like  cattle  or  hogs.  They  are  also  aware  that  it 
takes  about  as  much  honey,  digested  by  the  bees,  to  produce 
a  pound  of  comb,  as  it  takes  of  food  to  produce  a  pound  of  fat 
in  domestic  animals.  This  quantity  is  not  fixed  but  depends  in 
its  proportion  upon  the  circumstances  in  which  the  secretion 
is  produced.  It  is  safe,  however,  to  assume  from  experiments 
of  scientists  and  from  the  experience  of  practical  beekeepers, 
that  an  average  of  ten  pounds  of  honey  is  probably  required 
for  each  pound  of  comb.  If  honey  is  worth  15  cents  per  pound, 
it  indicates  a  cost  of  SI. 50  for  every  pound  of  comb. 

In  addition  it  is  worth  while  to  take  into  account  the  loss 
of  time  to  the  bees,  when  they  must  remain  idle  for  at  least 
a  day  to  produce  this  wax,  besides  the  time  of  building  combs. 
It  is  true  that  most  of  this  labor  is  performed  by  young  bees 
during  the  14  days  of  their  stay  in  the  hive  previous  to  field 
work.  But  when  a  yield  comes,  it  oftens  takes  old  bees  as  well 
as  young  bees  to  produce  the  needed  wax.  So  it  behooves  us 
to  save  comb  and  return  it  to  the  bees  after  having  emptied  it 
of  its  honey,  when  it  has  been  harvested  and  ripened  by  the 
bees. 

Moreover,  the  production  of  extracted  honey  enhances 
the  facility  for  preventing  swarming.  Although  the  method 
given  in  the  former  pages  for  the  prevention  of  swarming  is  also 
successful  in  comb-honey  production,  it  is  much  easier  to  secure 
an  almost  total  absence  of  swarms  with  the  production  of  ex- 
tracted honey,  because  we  save  our  super  combs  from  one  year 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  73 

to  another.  We  have  extracting  combs  which  have  been  in  use 
for  40  years  or  more  and  which  are  now  better  than  ever,  for 
the  bees  every  season  strengthen  them  by  the  addition  of  a  little 
more  wax.  Neither  is  there  any  loss  of  beeswax  in  the  production 
of  extracted  honey.  Bees  produce  comb  in  large  amount  when 
they  are  compelled  to  remain  filled  with  honey  from  one  day  to 
another,  for  want  of  cells  in  which  to  store  it.  If  empty  comb 
is  supplied  plentifully,  a  very  small  amount  of  wax  will  be 
produced.     Both  practice  and  theory  indicate  this. 

The  supers  are  placed  upon  the  hives  at  the  opening*of  the 
crop  of  honey.  This  is  perhaps  ambiguous  to  beginners.  But  it 
is  necessary  to  have  some  practical  experience  to  judge  of  the 
exact  time  and  even  experienced  beekeepers  may  put  the  supers 
on  too  early  or  too  late.  We  must  leave  this  matter  to  be  decided 
by  the  good  judgment  of  the  apiarist.  We  often  wait  until  our 
best  colonies  begin  to  whiten  their  brood-combs  with  fresh  bees- 
wax at  the  top.  Sometimes,  if  the  crop  opens  with  a  rush,  this 
may  be  too  late  to  prevent  swarming  preparations.  If  our  col- 
onies are  very  strong,  it  does  not  hurt  to  put  the  supers  orta  few 
days  earlier. 

Very  strong  colonies  may  be  given  two  supers  at  once, 
though  we  prefer  to  give  only  one,  waiting  to  put  on  the  second 
super  until  the  first  one  is  about  half  filled. 

Supers  that  are  already  filled  with  combs  fully  built  during 
a  previous  season  are  a  great  attraction  to  the  bees.  The  pro- 
ducers of  comb-honey  who  follow  the  method  of  Dr.  Miller  and 
others  to  place  a  few  already  built  sections  in  each  comb-honey 
super,  as  baits,  to  attract  the  bees  there,  will  readily  realize  what 
a  marked  influence  supers  of  comb  already  built  have  upon  the 
production  of  honey.  Few  people  recognize  the  great  cost  of 
comb  to  the  bees.  Yet  supers  are  filled  more  than  twice  as  readily 
when  already  full  of  drawn  combs  as  when  given  to  the  bees 
with  only  guides  or  even  with  comb  foundation.  Powerful  col- 
onies, in  a  very  promising  season,  may  be  given  as  many  as  3 
supers  of  the  large  size  that  we  use,  at  the  very  outset,  and  fill 
them  readily. 

Our  visits  to  the  bees  are  timed  according  to  the  prospects 


74  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

of  the  crop.  The  weather  has  a  great  influence  upon  results. 
After  several  days  of  rain,  during  one  season,  we  found  a  number 
of  colonies  of  great  strength,  to  whom  supers  had  been  given, 
actually  starving.  Super  combs,  partly  filled  with  honey  of  the 
previous  year,  and  saved  for  that  purpose,  were  given  them, 
among  the  empty  ones  in  the  supers.  Three  days  later,  the  warm 
sunshine  had  changed  conditions  so  quickly  that  we  found  those 
same  combs  of  honey  heavier  than  when  given.  The  bees  had 
already  gathered  a  sufficient  amount  to  store  nectar  in  the  supers. 

When  adding  second  and  third  supers,  we  sometimes  put 
them  on  top  of  the  first,  sometimes  between  it  and  the  brood 
apartment.  If  the  bees  are  scattering  their  honey  well,  there  is 
no  need  of  lifting  a  heavy  super  to  put  another  under  it.  But  if 
they  are  rather  conservative  and  crowd  their  honey  into  the 
combs  closely,  it  may  be  advisable  to  place  the  added  supers 
between  the  stories. 

When  the  crop  nears  its  close,  we  sometimes  find  it  profitable 
to  equalize  supers,  so  as  to  find  everything  full  when  we  remove 
the  honey.  For  instance,  a  strong  colony  may  have  3  supers, 
of  which  one  may  be  still  half  empty  while  the  other  two  are 
full.  Its  neighbor  may  be  a  colony  below  average,  with  one  super 
only,  and  this  only  a  third  full.  It  is  evident  then,  that  the 
stronger  colony  will  fill  its  remaining  empty  combs  sooner  than 
the  latter.  We  exchange  a  few  full  combs  from  this  strong  colony 
for  empty  combs  of  the  other,  so  that,  if  the  crop  ends  in  a  week, 
we  will  probably  find  both  colonies  with  full  supers. 

A  super,  two  thirds  full,  may  be  exchanged  from  a  strong 
colony  with  that  of  a  weaker  one,  that  has  barely  begun  storing 
in  the  only  super  it  has  had.  Both  will  probably  be  found  full 
a  few  days  later. 

In  these  equalizing  exchanges,  if  the  crop  is  on,  we  do  not 
bother  with  removing  the  bees  from  either  super,  for  bees  rarely 
fight  when  the  new  comers  are  found  with  full  stomachs.  In 
this  they  are  very  much  like  human  beings.  We  smile  upon  a 
man  who  comes  to  us  with  gifts;  but  the  beggar,  unless  he  suc- 
ceeds in  interesting  us  in  an  apparently  true  misfortune,  gets 
little  sympathy  and  a  cold  welcome. 


CHAPTER  9 


Fig.  40.       The  bee-escape  board  lends 
itself  to  modern  honey  production 


Extracting 

We  aim  to  extract  the  honey  as  soon  as  it  is  ripe,  and,  if 
possible,  before  the  crop  has  quite  ended.    The  reason  of  this  is 
obvious.   It  is  not  so  pleasant  to  remove  honey  during  a  dearth, 
as  during  a   honey   flow. 
But  a  great    deal  of  the 
honey   must  be  left  upon 
the  hives  until   the    crop 
is  over. 

On  the  afternoon 
preceding  the  removal  of 
the  honey,  we  put  on  the 
bee-escape  boards.  This 
operation  is  quickly  per- 
formed with  little  fatigue, 
because  of  the  method 
employed,  which  does  not 
require  the  lifting  of  the 

supers  more  than  one  end  at  a  time,  balancing  them  over  a 
cross  piece  which  supports  them  until  the  escape  board  is 
slipped  on  the  brood  apartment. 

Some  persons  object  to  the  bee-escape.  So  did  we,  before 
we  gave  it  a  thorough  trial.  Now  we  have  bee-escape  boards  in 
sufficient  number  to  supply  one  for  each  colony  and  we  find  the 
use  of  them  a  great  economy  of  labor.  After  from  7  to  14  hours, 
only  an  occasional  bee  is  left  in  the  super.  The  only  time  when 
bees  fail  to  leave  the  super  is  when  the  queen  is  with  them  or 
when  there  is  brood  in  the  super.  They  evidently  consider  it 
their  duty  to  remain  with  the  queen  or  the  helpless  brood  and  we 
should  not  criticize  them  for  it,  as  it  is  evidently  good  judgment 
on  their  part. 

We  have  to  be  careful,  when  putting  on  bee-ecapes  in  times 
of  dearth,  not  to  allow  of  any  passage  from  the  outside  for 
robbers,  as  they  would  help  themselves  to  the  combs  of  honey 
that  are  deprived  of  their  bees. 

75 


76 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


Fig.  41.     Using  mud  to  close  gaps  between  stories  made  by  the  hive  tool 
on  supers  long  in  usa 


Tracks  or  gaps  that  may  exist  between  supers,  especially 
when  they  have  seen  some  25  years  of  use,  are  readily  stopped 
with  a  little  wet  clay.    The  Europeans  use  cow  dung  mixed  with 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


77 


Fig.  42.    Method  of  lifting  supers  to  put  on  escape-board 

the  clay.  It  makes  a  stronger  cement.  Beginners,  with  new  hives, 
may  laugh  at  the  makeshifts  of  the  practical  beekeeper.  But  the 
time  comes  when  they  find  themselves  compelled  to  use  similar 
makeshifts. 


78  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

It  is  well,  in  very  hot  weather,  in  our  latitude,  to  avoid 
leaving  those  unoccupied  supers  on  the  hives  during  the  hot 
part  of  the  day,  as  the  heat  might  cause  the  combs  to  break 
down,  the  bees  being  no  longer  there  to  ventilate  and  lower  the 
temperature  of  the  super. 

If  the  crop  is  still  on,  no  precautions  need  be  taken  in  return- 
ing the  supers  to  the  colonies.  In  fact,  it  is  necessary  that  they 
be  returned  as  promptly  as  possible,  for  the  bees  are  idle  mean- 
while, if  the  brood  chamber  is  full.  So  we  make  due  haste  in 
returning  them  as  fast  as  emptied  of  their  honey.  We  saw, 
during  an  excellent  honey  harvest,  supers  that  had  been  emptied 
two  days  before  again  supplied  with  fresh  honey  in  every  cell. 
Such  harvests  are  rare,  however. 

If  we  have  a  number  of  spare  supers,  we  save  some  trouble 
by  making  an  exchange,  putting  on  the  empty  supers  as  fast 
as  the  full  ones  are  removed.  Very  often,  however,  in  a  bountiful 
harvest,  all  spare  supers  have  been  given  to  the  bees  before 
extracting  began.  A  half  dozen,  sometimes,  are  retained  from 
the  first  colonies  harvested,  to  exchange  for  full  supers  as  we  go 
along. 

If  the  season  is  at  end,  we  pile  all  the  supers,  as  fast  as 
emptied  of  their  honey,  in  the  honey  house  until  evening.  A 
short  time  before  sunset,  those  supers  are  returned  quickly, 
everybody  helping,  to  the  colonies  from  which  they  were  taken. 
This  prevents  the  excitement  of  their  return  from  lasting  long 
enough  to  cause  robbing,  since  night  prevents  further  hustling 
on  the  part  of  the  excited  bees.  When  morning  comes  again, 
everything  is  quiet. 

If  the  honey  is  not  well  ripened,  we  use  honey  tanks  to 
store  it.  But  as  we  have  numerous  outapiaries  and  the  honey 
might  not  be  safe  in  tanks  away  from  the  home  yard,  we  use 
alcohol  barrels  of  good  quality  and  thoroughly  dry,  to  contain 
the  crop.  These  are  emptied  at  leisure,  in  vessels  of  different 
capacity,  as  occasion  requires. 

It  is  sometimes  necessary  to  haul  the  supers  to  the  home 
apiary  or  central  plant,  to  do  the  extracting.  The  writer  does 
not  like  this  method  as  well  as  that  of  local  extracting.    Yet  it 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


79 


undoubtedly  has  some  advantages  that  cannot  be  secured  in 
local  extracting,  because  of  greater  facilities.  Each  apiarist 
must  decide  this  for  himself.  Our  principal  objection  to  it  is 
in  the  necessity  of  hauling  the  supers  back  and  forth  and  the 
fact  that  the  honey  cools  and  thickens  after  being  removed  from 
the  hives  and  is  more  difficult  to  extract.  Some  beekeepers  who 
use  a  central  plant  find  it  necessary  to  heat  the  room  overnight, 
at  least,  to  warm  up  the  honey  for  extracting. 


Fig.  43.  First  honey  extractor  of  Hruschka.   The  infancy  of  the 
development  of  centrifugal  force 


80 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


Extracting  Implements 

The  senior  Dadant  was  already  keepingbeeswhenHruschka, 
of  Dolo,  near  Venice,  in  1865,  invented  the  centrifugal  honey 
extractor  (smelatore).  This  invention  was  described  in  the 
American  Bee  Journal,  three  years  later,  in  April,  1868.  It  may 
seem  strange  to  a  modern  student  that  so  important  a  discovery 
should  have  been  3  years  in  coming  across  the  ocean,  but  when 
we  remember  that  there  were  only  3  or  4  magazines  published 
on  beekeeping  at  that  time;  none  then  in  Italy;  that  the  trans- 
atlantic cables  were  just  beginning  their  useful  activity,  it  will 
be  easier  to  comprehend  the  slowness  of  the  spread  of  so  useful 
a  discovery. 

There  were  no  manufacturers  of  bee  supplies,  no  dealers 
in  hives  or  smokers,  at  that  time,  in  the  United  States.  So  the 
only  way  to  secure  an  extractor  was  to  have  one  built  at  home, 


Fig.  44.    The  first  extractor  made  in  the  United  States 
was  the  pattern  of  our  first  extractor 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


81 


after  the  cut  given  in  the  American  Bee  Journal,  Volume  3, 
page  189.  Our  local  tinner  was  employed  to  make  the  tub,  of 
strong  tin  instead  of  wood.     The  blacksmith  made  the  basket 


Fig.  45.    Uncapping  at  a  single  stroke  of  the  knife  owing  to  the  proper 
depth  of  super  frames 


82 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


frame,  and  a  churn  gear  furnished  the  power.  But  the  fly  netting 
which  we  employed  as  screen  for  the  baskets  was  too  flimsy  and 
allowed  the  combs  to  bulge  in  the  baskets,  so  as  to  break.  Add 
to  this  the  fact  that  we  did  not  yet  have  super  frames  but  had 
to  extract  from  full-sized  brood  combs,  that  our  combs  were  not 
very  straight  in  the  frames,  since  comb  foundation  was  not  yet 
in  use,  and  you  will  realize  how  much  trouble  it  was  to  extract 
honey  in  the  pioneer  days. 

But  the  honey  was  splendid — what  we  did  secure — so  much 
so  that  the  first  dealer  to  whom  we  offered  it  replied  very  tartly 
that  he  did  not  want  any  sugar  syrup;  that  whenever  he  did 
want  some,  he  could  make  it  himself;  that  he  knew  honey  when 
he  saw  it  and  had  never  seen  any  that  light  in  color. 

The  coarseness  of  the  extractor  was  not  the  only  disagree- 


ing. 46.    Robber  Cloth  and  pan  protect   the  supers  from  robbers  during 

extracting 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


83 


able  feature  of  the  newly  discovered  method.  We  had  no  utensils 
for  handling  the  honey  and  cappings.  A  butcher  knife,  later 
a  thin-bladed  knife,  served  as  uncapping  knife,  and  we  can  still 
remember  the  relief  brought  to  the  work  by  the  invention  of  the 
Bingham  knife,  whose  beveled  edge  kept  the  cappings  from 
sticking  again  to  the  combs,  after  having  been  shaved  off.  An 
ordinary  dishpan  served  us  for  several  seasons,  as  a  capping 
can.  This  had  to  be  emptied,  every  few  hours,  into  a  sieve  with 
side-boards,  draining  over  a  5-gallon  earthen  jar. 

After  4  or  5  years  of  this  infantile  and  ridiculous  method, 
or  lack  of  method,  we  decided  to  have  a  large  strainer  built  which 
would  hold  the  cappings  of  a  whole  day's  extracting.  Manu- 
facturers of  honey  extractors  had  then  come  into  being  and  we 
ordered  from  one  of  them  a  can  of  the  same  size  as  an  extractor 
can,  with  another  can  in- 
side of  it.  The  latter  can 
had  a  screen  instead  of  a 
bottom  and  was  ten  inches 
shallower  than  the  outer 
can,  its  bottom  resting  on 
a  pivot  in  the  center  of  the 
outer  can  and  its  upper 
edge  on  the  inner  edge  of 
it.  This  was  the  "capping 
can,"  named  "Dadant  un- 
capping can"  by  dealers, 
which  is  now  often  replaced 
by  a  long  trough  with 
double  screened  bottom  in 
the  honey  house.  We  prefer 
the  capping  can  to  any- 
other  implement  for  hold- 
ing cappings,  because  it 
may  be  transported  like  an 
extractor,  because  it  is 
light  and  easily  cleaned. 
Some    such     implement 


Fig.  41.    The  Original  Capping  can  is 
still  in  use  in  the  Dadant  Apiaries 


84  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

should  be  used.  We  have  several  of  them,  so  that  we  can  allow 
the  cappings  to  drain  dry. 

We  do  not  like  the  capping  melter  sold  by  dealers,  which 
heats  the  cappings  enough  to  melt  the  combs  and  separate  the 
wax  from  the  honey  as  fast  as  harvested.  True,  it  does  fast 
work,  but  it  colors  the  honey,  injures  its  flavor,  and  produces 
too  much  heat  at  a  time  when  the  weather  is  already  as  hot  as 
the  apiarist  can  endure. 

We  find  no  trouble  in  handling  the  cappings.  The  honey 
falling  with  them  into  the  capping-can  drains  more  readily  if 
the  fresh  cappings  are  well  stirred  about  every  half  hour.  This 
stirring  with  a  sharp,  clean,  firm  slat  or  stick  breaks  them  up  into 
small  bits  and  greatly  aids  the  draining  of  the  honey.  After  24 
to  48  hours  of  draining,  they  are  emptied  into  a  barrel  of  which 
one  head  has  been  removed.  When  the  season  is  over,  we  may 
have  several  barrels  of  these  cappings  and  the  entire  lot  is  ren- 
dered at  one  time  into  beeswax.  There  is  no  loss  of  quality  in  the 
capping  honey  and  the  wax  rendering  is  done  in  one  operation. 
Sometimes  we  wash  these  cappings  preparatory  to  rendering 
them.  The  sweet  water  thus  secured  is  made  into  mead  or  vine- 
gar.   Nothing  is  lost. 

The  amount  of  cappings  secured  from  a  given  amount 
of  extracted  honey  we  find  to  be  about  1  per  cent.  So  when  we 
have  a  crop  of  50,000  pounds  of  extracted  honey,  we  can  figure 
on  approximately  500  pounds  of  the  finest  quality  of  beeswax, 
after  it  has  been  rendered  and  purified.  We  used  to  get  a  larger 
amount  of  cappings.  That  was  when  the  combs  were  crooked, 
or  more  or  less  wavy,  before  we  used  full  sheets  of  comb-founda- 
tion. It  was  also  more  difficult  to  do  the  uncapping.  We  use 
also  a  less  number  of  combs  in  the  super  than  in  the  brood- 
chamber.  At  first,  when  the  bees  are  given  the  plain  sheets  of 
foundation  in  the  super,  it  is  necessary  to  have  the  same  number 
of  combs  as  in  the  brood -chamber.  But  after  they  are  built, 
they  may  be  placed  farthe.  apart.  At  each  new  crop,  the  bees 
strengthen  them  by  adding  more  wax.  They  also  thicken  them 
so  that  we  may  use  as  few  as  9  super  combs  in  the  super  of  an 
11-frame  hive.    This  gives  thicker  combs  of  honey  and  there  is 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  85 

less  uncapping.  These  deep  cells  are  also  less  likely  to  attract 
the  queen  who  requires  shallow  cells  to  lay  eggs.  So  the  danger 
of  breeding  in  the  super  is  lessened  by  the  use  of  a  less  number 
of  combs  in  it. 

Robbing 

We  spoke  of  the  possibility  of  annoyance  by  robbers,  when 
returning  supers  of  combs  to  the  hives.  As  a  matter  of  course, 
these  combs  are  sticky  with  honey.  If  the  crop  has  ended,  the 
odor  of  the  honey  attracts  robbers.  That  is  why  we  return  them 
to  the  bees  in  the  evening  only.  Some  people  do  not  return  them 
at  all  till  the  following  spring.  We  object  to  preserving  them  in 
this  shape,  for  several  reasons. 

First.  The  honey  with  which  they  are  still  slightly  smeared 
is  likely  to  gather  moisture,  for  honey  is  exceedingly  hygro- 
metric,  absorbing  moisture  readily  from  the  air.  W7e  at  different 
times  had  honey  to  ferment  in  the  cells,  during  the  season  fol- 
lowing, owing  to  the  presence  of  a  small  quantity  of  this  fer- 
mented honey  in  combs  that  had  not  been  cleaned. 

Second.  Combs  which  are  sticky  with  honey  are  much 
more  attractive  to  both  mice  and  bees  and  therefore  are  more 
difficult  to  preserve  over  winter. 

Third.  The  same  trouble  is  likely  to  occur  when  we  place 
these  supers  on  the  hive  in  the  spring,  as  we  fear  at  harvest 
time.  Their  strong  odor  attracts  robbers  to  the  hives  to  which 
they  ar3  given. 

Some  people  allow  the  bees  of  the  different  colonies  to 
clean  out  the  supers,  after  the  crop  is  over,  by  exposing  them 
in  an  open  spot  of  the  apiary,  until  all  the  honey  has  been  carried 
out.  We  have  found  this  to  give  incentive  to  robbing  and  do 
not  like  the  practice.  Besides,  if  a  neighbor  has  bees,  they  are 
likely  to  come  and  help  themselves  also.  We  believe  in  being 
neighborly,  but  not  to  that  extent. 

When  robbing  has  begun  on  a  colony,  if  it  is  not  worth 
saving,  we  break  it  up  and  give  its  combs  to  other  colonies  to 
protect,  after  having  first  gotten  rid  of  the  robbers. 

If  the  colony  is  worth  saving  and  we  find  that  it  is  robbed 
by  only  one  other  colony,  we  stop  the  robbing  by  exchanging 


sti 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


Fig.  48.    Supers  returned  to  the  hives  after  the  last  extracting  of  the  year 


the  two  colonies  for  each  other,  placing  the  robbing  colony  in 
place  of  the  robbed  one  and  vice  versa.  A  little  flour,  sprinkled 
over  the  escaping  robbers,  readily  indicates  their  home. 

If  the  robbing  has  just  begun,  it  is  usually  sufficient  to  throw 
a  bunch  of  grass  loosely  upon  the  entrance  of  the  robbed  col- 
ony. Its  home  guards  station  themselves  in  that  grass  as  in 
trenches  and  pounce  upon  the  robbers  who  soon  give  up  the 
attempt. 

But  it  is  much  easier  to  forestall  robbing  than  to  stop  it 
after  it  has  successfully  begun.  Therefore  we  take  the  greatest 
care  to  avoid  exposing  any  honey  while  extracting. 

We  use  both  robber-cloths  over  the  supers  while  carrying 
them  and  tin  pans  under  them,  to  avoid  dropping  any  honey  on 
the  wheelbarrow  used,  or  on  the  grass,  or  on  the  clothes  of  the 
apiarist.  It  is  worth  while  to  be  careful.  One  experience  with 
robbing  is  sufficient  to  teach  us  a  useful  lesson. 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPIXG 


87 


While  working  about  the  apiary,  the  apiarist  sometimes 
finds  himself  followed  by  robber  bees  which  appear  to  under- 
stand that  they  may  find  profit  in  shadowing  him.     We  have 


Fig.  49.     Super  combs  which  have  been  in  use  for  over  fifty  years,  and 
are  fully  as  good  as  at  first 

often  stopped  our  work  for  an  hour  or  so  on  this  account,  or 
perhaps  have  gone  to  work  at  the  other  end  of  the  apiary  to 
baffle  the  robbers. 

The  worst  thing  to  be  feared  from  robbers  is  not  during  the 
harvesting  of  the  crop.  It  is  when  there  happens  to  be  disease 
in  the  apiary  and  we  find  ourselves  compelled  to  open  the  hives 
that  contain  this  disease  in  a  period  of  scarcity  of  crop.  This 
matter  will  be  considered  at  the  chapter  on  diseases. 

Varying  Honey  Crops 

In  our  locality,  as  in  many  others,  the  honey  yields  are 
divided  into  two  very  distinct  seasons,  the  summer  crop  and 


88  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF    BEEKEEPING 

the  fall  crop.  The  flavor,  quality  and  color  of  the  honeys  of 
these  two  seasons  being  very  distinct,  it  is  necessary  to  keep 
the  crops  separate.  Then  also  there  is  sometimes  quite  a  dearth 
between  the  two,  during  which  the  unsupplied  swarms  must  be 
looked  after,  just  as  we  do  in  spring. 

Requeening 

It  is  usually  during  this  short  season  that  we  replace  the 
queens  which  have  passed  their  period  of  usefulness.  Some  peo- 
ple change  the  queens  in  their  hives  every  season.  We  believe 
that  a  queen  is  better  in  her  second  year  than  in  her  first.  Ex- 
ception must  be  made,  however,  with  the  queens  that  are  in- 
ferior, by  positive  test,  in  their  prolificness  or  in  the  generation 
which  they  produce.  Such  queens  should  be  replaced  as  soon  as 
possible. 

We  allow"  good  queens  to  become  fully  two  years  old  before 
we  think  of  removing  them.  The  removal  and  replacing  with 
young  queens  is  done  with  stock  purchased  from  queen-breeders 
of  known  integrity,  whose  breeding  stock  is  known  to  us  and 
approved  as  to  purity  and  prolificness. 

Rearing  one's  own  queens,  from  known  stock  of  good  honey- 
producing  qualities,  is  certainly  the  very  best  way,  even  though 
a  beekeeper  in  the  North  may  find  it  cheaper  in  dollars  and 
cents  to  buy  the  queens  already  reared,  from  a  Southern  State, 
where  the  season  lasts  longer  and  bees  are  not  so  valuable  for 
honey  production. 

The  advantage  of  rearing  our  own  queens  is  that  we  know 
exactly  what  the  parentage  is,  as  far  as  the  mother  is  concerned 
at  least,  and  if  we  use  a  little  diplomacy,  it  is  often  easy  to  Ital- 
ianize our  neighbors'  bees  to  secure  pure  matings.  We  have 
repeatedly,  in  bygone  years,  Italianized  colonies  for  neighboring 
bee  men,  at  one  dollar  per  colony,  taking  all  the  trouble  upon 
ourselves.  We  found  that  it  paid  us  in  the  long  run,  as  we  secured 
more  pure  matings;  since  the  neighbors  are  not  so  careful  as 
we  are  in  doing  away  with  drone-combs  and  rear  more  drones 
than  we  do.    This  is  just  a  suggestion  to  the  careful  beekeeper. 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  89 

Queens  will  mate  with  drones  from  colonies  a  mile,  or  two  or 
more  away.   We  believe  the  drone  travels  the  greater  part  of  the 

distance. 

Some  beekeepers  rear  queens  from  the  very  best  honey- 
producing  colony  in  their  apiary,  regardless  of  whether  the 
bees  of  that  colony  are  of  pure  breed.  We  do  not.  Experience 
has  taught  us  that  fixed  qualities  are  very  rare  in  hybrids.  Be- 
sides, the  workers  produced  by  a  hybrid  queen  are  usually  cross 
in  disposition.  Pure  Italians  have  our  preference.  There  are 
other  races  equally  good,  such  as  the  Caucasian.  But  Caucasian 
bees  are  of  gray  color  and  a  slight  mixture  with  the  common 
race  is  difficult  if  not  impossible  to  detect.  Italians  are  very 
good  bees  and  have  the  advantage  of  showing  impure  blood 
readily.  We  prefer  them  to  any  other  race.  We  have  tried  the 
Cyprian,  the  Carniolan  and  the  Caucasian.  The  latter  we  would 
take,  next  to  the  Italians.  The  Cyprian  are  too  cross.  The  Car- 
niolan show  too  great  a  propensity  for  swarming. 

Queen  Introduction 

Some  very  practical  men  introduce  queens  in  hives,  dur- 
ing the  honey  crop,  by  simply  removing  the  old  queen,  smok- 
ing the  hive  thoroughly  for  a  little  while,  allowing  the  new 
queen  to  run  in  at  the  entrance  and  closing  the  entrance  for  a 
few  minutes.  This  method  has  its  drawbacks,  for  it  is  unsafe 
in  any  but  a  good  honey-gathering  season.  Some  people  believe 
in  making  the  colony  queenless  ahead  of  time.  We  don't.  We 
wait  till  the  new  queen  is  there  before  removing  the  old  one.  We 
believe  it  a  good  plan  to  cage  the  old  queen,  for  an  hour  or  two 
previous  to  killing  her,  in  the  cage  in  which  the  new  queen  is  to 
be  introduced.  It  gives  the  cage  the  odor  of  the  old  queen  and 
appears  to  make  safe  introduction  more  secure.  Caging  the 
queen  on  the  brood-comb  for  a  couple  of  days,  we  consider  the 
best  method  of  introduction.  WTe  have  had  less  losses  with  this, 
method  than  with  any  other. 


CHAPTER  10 

Nomadic  Beekeeping 

It  sometimes  happens  that,  after  the  first  crop,  the  weather 
is  so  dry  that  the  bloom's  prospects  are  poor  for  a  fall  crop. 


Fig.  50.    The  Mississippi  bottoms  viewed  from  the  Koch  apiary  on  the 

edge  of  the  bluff 


Sometimes  also,  the  first  crop  is  a  total  failure  from  drouth. 
We  have  had  one  or  two  unprofitable  years  from  too  much  wet. 
But  most  of  the  short  crops  have  been  due  to  drouth. 

When  the  uplands  are  dry,  the  bottom  lands  or  low  lands 
near  the  Mississippi  are  usually  thriving,  owing  to  the  early 
floods  which  recede  in  summer.  So  we  practice  nomadic  bee- 
keeping. 

91 


92 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


Our  first  attempt  at  moving  bees  to  the  pastures,  in  the 
midst  of  summer,  was  in  1881.  During  that  season  everything 
of  value  to  bees   on  the  hills,  dried  or  wilted  in  June  and  Julv. 


,N0fVTH 


South 

Fig.  51     Chart  of  the  Dadant  apiaries  in  1880 
Each  circle  has  a  diameter  of  4  miles. 

The  low  lands,  having  been  covered  with  water  until  the  begin- 
ning of  July,  a  very  rapid  growth  of  fall  plants  began  as  soon  as 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


93 


the  waters  receded.  Polygonums  or  knot  weeds,  (smartweed) 
especially  of  the  variety  persicaria,  also  called  heartsease ;  Spanish 
needles  or  bidens,  also  called  burr-marigolds;  boneset  and  nu- 
merous other  low  land  plants,  formed  great  fields  of  variegated 
colors,  yielding  splendid  golden  honey. 


Fig.  52.    Map  of  the  Dadant  Apiaries  in  1919 
Each  circle  has  a  diameter  of  4  miles, 


94 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


Something  over  a  hundred  colonies  were  moved  by  us  on 
hay  racks,  during  some  of  the  very  hottest  weather  of  that  year, 
a  distance  of  25  miles. 

Luckily  the  nights  were  cool.  The  colonies  were  so  short 
of  stores  that  some  did  not  even  have  brood.  So,  by  moving 
them  during  the  night,  we  had  no  difficulty  in  transporting  them. 
The  trips  took  about  8  hours,  including  nailing  them  up  and 
opening  them  on  arrival.  The  result  was  very  satisfactory  and 
proved  profitable. 

No  total  failures  happened  again  for  a  number  of  years 
and  it  was  only  in  1918,  37  years  later,  that  we  again  resorted 
to  moving  bees  in  summer.  But  at  this  time,  we  had  auto  trucks 
and  we  were  not  compelled  to  travel  at  night,  though  most  of 
the  hauling  was  done  early  in  the  morning.    In  1918   and   1919 


Fig.  53.    Moving  bees  on  Auto  Trucks 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


95 


we    thus    hauled  a  large  number  of  colonies  to   the  low  lands 
(400  in  1919),  with  profit. 

The  advent  of  the  auto  truck  has  certainly  made  a  revolu- 
tion in  nomadic  beekeeping,  as  a  man  can  readily  enough  haul 
even  rich  colonies  from  one  place  to  another.  To  confine  them, 
we  usually  entirely  nail  up  the  entrance,  as  we  find  that  the 
old  bees  are  apt  to  worry  on  the  screen,  if  screen  is  used  to  close 
it  up,  since  that  is  their  usual  exit.  We  remove  the  cap  and  the 
supers,  hauling  them  separately,  and  each  colony  is  covered 
with  a  wooden  frame  entirely  screened  over,  with  cross  pieces 


Fig.  54.    Closing  brood-chambers  with  screens  for  hauling  in  hot  weather 


9G  DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

to  protect  the  screen.  Thus  400  colonies  were  hauled  from  21 
to  30  miles  without  any  loss.  They  were  brought  back  to  the 
original  apiaries  in  the  fall  during  frosty  weather.  At  that  tim€ 
no  ventilation  is  necessary.  A  deep  wire  cover  gives  them  sum- 
cient  air. 

In  addition  to  the  advantage  of  bringing  bees  to  rich  pas- 
ture,we  believe  there  is  a  gain  in  what  Mr.  Demuth  calls  "morale" 
in  the  behavior  of  the  bees,  when  they  are  transported.  We  have 
often  noticed  that  bees  brought  to  a  new  spot,  whether  it  be  in 
spring  or  fall,  and  having  to  learn  a  new  country,  become  more 
active.  It  seems  to  increase  their  energy,  their  morale,  to  find 
themselves  in  new  fields.  We  are  not  the  only,  ones,  besides 
Demuth,  to  have  noticed  this.  Others  have  spoken  of  it  also. 
It  sems  to  act  upon  them  as  upon  pioneers  who  go  forward 
to  new  countries,  for  we  believe  that  the  great  energy,  the  posi- 
tive activity,  of  the  American  people,  are  due  to  their  having 
been  pioneers  in  new  spots  as  yet  uncultivated.  Bees  may  be 
induced  to  more  activity  in  several  ways  and  we  believe  this 
is  one  of  them. 

A  similar  argument  is  brought  forward  by  a  beekeeper  of  the 
Netherlands,  who,  after  having  described  the  nomadic  methods 
of  Hollandish  beekeepers,  who  move  their  bees  to  the  heather 
fields  every  summer,  asserts  that  the  moving  of  the  bees  increases 
their  activity  and  the  breeding  propensity  of  their  queens.  We 
might  cite  similar  opinions  from  several  other  noted  apiarists 


CHAPTER  11 
Fall  Management 

When  the  end  of  the  crop  is  near,  we  find  it  advisable  to 
make  sure  that  our  bees  are  putting  enough  honey  in  their  brood 
combs  for  winter. 

With  comb-honey  production,  it  is  often  noticed  that  the 
bees  have  crowded  so  much  honey  in  the  brood  combs  that  they 
have  little  room  for  breeding.  The  colony  decreases  in  numbers, 
especially  if  the  crop  lasts  to  a  late  date. 

With  our  management  in  the  production  of  extracted  honey, 
large  brood  chambers  and  very  free  access  to  a  number  of  supers, 
it  may  happen,  if  we  are  not  on  the  lookout,  that  our  bees  will 
have  a  contrary  experience,  an  insufficient  quantity  of  honey 
in  the  brood  combs.  We  believe  in  a  very  large  amount  of  stores 
for  winter  and  spring.  The  old  way  was  to  figure  on  25  pounds. 
We  want  40  pounds  at  least  to  make  sure  that  there  will  be  no 
shortage  and  no  stint  in  the  spring  breeding.  To  obtain  this, 
we  crowd  the  bees  for  room ;  that  is  to  say,  we  allow  them  a  little 
less  super  room  and  this  forces  them  to  put  a  sufficiency  in  the 
brood  combs.    Better  have  50  pounds  than  only  25. 

It  is  not  advisable,  however,  to  cramp  them  so  that  the 
fall  breeding  will  be  neglected.  A  colony  wintering  on  mainly 
old  bees  and  a  limited  number  of  you«ig  bees  is  not  likely  to 
succeed  as  well  as  a  colony  that  has  bred  freely  till  the  late  fall. 
This  question  requires  j  udgment  on  the  part  of  the  apiarist.  Even 
a  very  experienced  man  will  make  mistakes  in  this  matter.  Much 
also  depends  upon  the  conditions  at  the  end  of  the  crop.  In 
many  seasons  the  amount  of  brood  reared,  before  cool  nights 
come,  depends  upon  the  field  conditions. 


97 


CHAPTER  12 
Wintering 

If  we  have  a  sufficiency  of  honey  in  the  brood  combs,  a 
good  strong  colony  of  bees  upon  those  combs,  we  have  the  best 
possible  conditions  for  winter,  provided  the  honey  is  of  good 
quality. 

We  had  very  expensive  experience  with  honeydew,  har- 
vested in  July  and  retained  in  the  brood  combs  for  winter.  We 
had  similarly  great  losses  with  fruit  juice,  apple  juice,  grape 
juice,  etc.,  harvested  by  the  bees  in  September-October,  during 
a  dearth  of  honey.  The  season  of  1879  was  especially  discourag- 
ing, for,  while  the  bees  did  no  damage  to  sound  fruit  and  only 
gathered  grape- juice  from  bird -damaged  grapes  and  sweet  cider 
from  damaged  apples,  many  of  our  neighbors  thought  that  we 
were  getting  rich  at  their  expense,  supposing  that  our  bees  were 
transforming  all  that  fruit  juice  into  good  honey.  The  truth 
of  the  matter  was  that  many  a  bee  was  unable  to  even  reach 
home  with  the  fermented  juices  that  it  gathered,  in  lieu  of  good 
honey.  Although  we  tried  to  take  out  of  the  comb  all  the  cider 
and  fermented  grape  juice  that  they  thus  stored  in  the  cells, 
there  was  enough  left  to  poison  them  during  the  cold  days. 

Honeydew,  fruit  juice,  cheap  syrups,  and  honey  containing 
many  pollen  grains,  are  bad  winter  food.  To  keep  warm,  the 
bees  must  consume  honey  and  they  must  have  as  pure  saccharine  ♦ 
matter  as  possible,  as  all  grades  of  sweet  food  containing  acids, 
vegetable  matter,  starch,  etc.,  leave  a  large  amount  of  residue 
in  their  intestines,  which  they  must  discharge  out  of  the  hive, 
on  the  wing,  or  suffer  from  diarrhea  or  dysentery.  This  is  dis- 
charged in  the  hive,  upon  the  other  bees  of  the  cluster,  if  the 
weather  is  too  cold  for  them  to  void  their  feces  outside.  That 
is  why  many  of  the  most  practical  apiarists  feed  their  bees  the 
best  quality  of  sugar  syrup  to  complete  their  winter  stores. 
It  is  a  good  method  to  follow,  even  if  some  desk-educated  apiar- 
ists affirm  that  bee  diseases  are  due  to  the  use  of  sugar  in  bee 
food.  We  are  quite  willing  to  grant  that,  for  spring  food,  nothing 
is  better  than  honey,  because  of  its  containing  matter  which 

99 


100  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

helps  build  the  body  of  the  young  bee.  But  when  the  bees  are 
full  grown  and  confined  to  the  hive,  nothing  is  better  for  them 
than  the  purest  saccharine  matter.  So  we  have  always  made 
it  a  point  to  remove  all  honeydew  and  late-gathered,  dubious 
sweets,  harvested  during  a  shortage  of  flowers  in  fall. 

If  the  bees  are  short,  we  add  to  their  stores  by  supplying 
them,  in  inverted  can  feeders,  in  the  month  of  October,  with 
sugar  syrup  made  of  2  parts  of  high  grade  cane  sugar  to  1  part 
of  water.  If  they  do  not  take  it  too  fast,  they  will  assimilate  it, 
or  in  other  terms  invert  it,  by  their  saliva,  just  as  they  do  with 
pure  nectar.  If  there  is  danger  of  the  sugar  not  being  sufficiently 
inverted,  it  is  a  good  plan  to  add  to  the  food  about  one  fifth 
of  its  weight  in  good  honey,  with  the  quality  of  which  we  are  ac- 
quainted. This  point  is  important,  for  it  would  not  do  to  use 
unknown  honey  that  might  bring  them  disease,  such  as  foul- 
brood. 

In  our  entire  experience,  we  have  had  5  or  6  winters  when 
the  amount  stored  by  the  bees  was  insufficient  to  carry  them 
through.  Whenever  the  amount  of  good  sugar  syrup  given 
the  bees,  in  addition  to  their  own  stores,  was  sufficient,  we 
regularly  found  them  to  winter  better  than  if  they  had  used 
only  natural  stores.  So  we  are  very  much  in  favor  of  sugar  feed- 
ing whenever  the  colonies  are  short  for  winter. 

Whatever  be  the  conditions,  we  aim  to  have  our  bees  in 
proper  shape  for  winter  long  before  the  opening  of  cold  weather. 
Just  as  it  was  necessary  to  get  them  to  breed  plentifully  until 
the  chilly  days  come,  so  it  is  necessary  that  they  should  quit 
breeding  when  there  are  no  more  bees  being  lost  from  overwork 
or  accident.  We  want  plenty  of  young  bees  for  winter,  but  we 
do  not  want  them  to  have  an  amount  of  brood  to  care  for,  when 
winter  opens.  At  that  time,  the  quieter  they  are,  the  better 
it  is  for  them  and  ourselves. 

Cellar  Wintering 

We  experimented  largely  on  both  cellar  and  outdoor  winter- 
ing.  For  15  or  18  years,  we  wintered  the  bees  at  our  home  apiary 


DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  101 

in  the  cellar  and  occasionally  also  at  an  outapiary.  We  dis- 
continued it  because,  in  our  latitude,  there  are  too  many  win- 
ters when  a  number  of  warm  days  make  it  undesirable  to  have 
the  bees  in  confinement.  We  are  just  a  little  too  far  south  for 
regularly  successful  cellar  wintering.  If  we  could  foresee  the 
weather,  we  would  put  them  in  the  cellar  for  the  cold  winters 
and  keep  them  out-of-doors  during  the  mild  ones. 

Our  House  Cellar 

In  1875,  we  built  a  house  in  which  a  hot-air  furnace  was 
placed.  We  separated  a  space,  measuring  12x22  feet,  from  the 
main  cellar,  with  a  double-wall  partition.  The  parts  of  this 
room  that  had  the  outer  wall  exposed  to  the  weather  in  winter 
were  also  lined  with  boards  and  shavings  on  the  inside,  so  as  to 
avoid  the  sudden  changes  of  temperature.  This  bee-cellar,  when 
too  cold,  was  readily  warmed  by  opening  the  partition  door 
that  separated  it  from  the  main  cellar.  In  case  of  too  much 
heat,  two  windows  could  be  opened  and  in  fact  remained  open 
most  of  the  winter.  But  both  the  air  currents  and  the  heat  were 
easily  regulated. 

In  this  cellar  we  wintered  bees  for  some  15  winters,  with 
very  good  success.  The  failures  were  always  due  to  mild  weather, 
when  the  sun  would  permit  the  outdoor  bees  to  fly  and  our 
cellared  bees  were  restless.  Ice  was  tried  to  cool  the  cellar  but 
it  did  not  seem  very  practical.  We  finally  abandoned  cellar- 
wintering  altogether  as  unnecessary  in  our  latitude.  We  have 
seen  many  cellars,  in  locations  further  north,  and  we  think  the 
hillside  cellar,  with  a  well-protected  entrance,  on  a  level  with 
the  apiary,  is  the  ideal  cellar.  It  must  be  deep  enough  in  the 
hill  to  be  immune  to  temperature  changes. 

The  degree  of  temperature  that  we  considered  the  most 
desirable  in  the  cellar,  was  from  42°  to  45°.  Messrs  E.  F.  Phillips 
and  Geo.  S.  Demuth,  of  the  Bureau  of  Entomology,  section  of 
beekeeping,  at  Washington,  have  made  extensive  experiments 
and  they  hold  that  a  temperature  of  nearly  50  is  requisite.  It 
would  be  very  unreasonable  to  differ  with  them,  after  the  positive 


102  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

tests  and  extensive  experiments  made  by  them.  The  tempera- 
ture, as  recorded  by  us  in  the  cellar,  might  admit  of  50  at  the 
top  of  the  hives.  But  there  is  a  very  safe  way  to  adjust  the 
advice  to  give  the  novice.  Have  a  thermometer,  try  to  find  the 
degree  at  which  your  bees  are  quietest,  and  hold  it  at  that. 
Kverybody  agrees  that  this  is  sound  advice.  When  the  bees 
are  happy,  we  can  just  hear  a  slight  rumble,  a  "bruissement" 
as  the  French  call  it,  much  resembling  the  quiet  rustle  of  the 
leaves  among  the  trees  or  the  whisper  of  the  waves  on  a  distant 
shore. 

Wintering  in  Clamps 

We  also  tried  wintering  in  clamps,  long  ago.  For  two  win- 
ters, we  put  our  bees  in  a  clamp,  just  as  we  would  potatoes  or 
cabbage,  with  the  only  difference  that  we  had  draft  holes,  for 
the  ingress  and  egress  of  ventilation.  This  method  would  cer- 
tainly be  successful  in  cold  climates.  It  failed  with  us  when 
we  had  a  wet  winter,  the  ground  of  the  silo  being  soaking  wet 
during  the  greater  part  of  the  winter.  The  bees  suffered  from 
mould  and  came  out  in  bad  shape. 

Wintering  Out-of-Doors 

This  was  the  final  method  adopted  by  us.  W7e  tried  colonies 
in  sheds,  sheltered  by  closing  the  shed  in  stormy  weather  and 
opening  it  on  warm  days.  This  method  was  very  satisfactory. 
But  sheds  for  hundreds  of  colonies  are  not  practical.  W7e  tried 
putting  large  dry  goods  boxes  over  some  hives,  during  the  cold. 
This  was  also  good,  provided  we  uncovered  our  colonies  in  warm 
days. 

We  tried  what  has  been  called  "chaff-hives,"  with  2  inches 
of  chaff  or  sawdust  all  around,  above  and  below  the  hive  body. 
This  was  good  but  entailed  the  making  of  very  expensive  and 
cumbrous  outer-cases,  which  made  the  hives  difficult  to  trans- 
port, especially  as  our  hives  are  already  very  large.  A  chaff- 
hive  of  the  Dadant  pattern  weighed  80  pounds,  empty.  In  addi- 
tion, during  one  winter  we  found  that  the  bees  which  were  con- 


DAD  ANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEE  KEEPING 


103 


Fig.  55.    Hives  packed  for  winter  out-of-doors 


fined  by  the  cold  needed  a  flight  as  often  as  the  weather  warmed 
sufficiently.  The  colonies  in  our  chaff-hives  failed  to  take  flight 
whenever  there  happened  to  be  just  one  warm  day,  because 
it  took  more  time  for  the  warmth  of  the  atmosphere  to  reach  the 
cluster,  than  with  single-wall  hives. 

We  finally  adopted  the  method  which  gave  us  the  least 
amount  of  expense,  while  securing  a  good  average  of  wintering, 
for  the  winter  climate  that  we  have  in  our  locality.  The  hives 
are  double  on  the  back,  as  noticed  in  the  description.  The  brood 
chamber  is  reduced  to  the  actual  capacity  of  the  colony,  by 
removing  all  empty  frames,  if  any,  and  moving  the  division 
board  to  reduce  the  space  as  much  as  possible.  Then  forest 
leaves  are  used  both  in  the  body  and  in  the  cover,  as  protection. 
The  oilcloth  is  first  removed,  and  the  straw  mat  laid  directly 


104 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 


Fig.  56.    A  three-colony  winter-"     - 


over  the  frames,  so  that  the  moisture  from  the  bees  ma}'  escape 
gradually  through  it  into  the  leaves  of  the  cap,  without  causing 
a  draft  of  ai  r. 

The  hive  is  then  wrapped  with  forest  leaves,  held  in  place 
with  wire  netting  of  the  kind  used  for  poultry  yards.  A  piece 
of  netting  of  the  proper  size  is  laid  behind  the  hive,  leaves  spread 
upon  it  and  both  ends  brought  together  in  front,  which  is  always 
faced  south,  southeast  or  southwest.  In  this  way  the  hive  is 
efficiently  protected  from  fierce  north  winds,  but  the  front  is  open 
so  as  to  permit  the  rays  of  the  noon  sun  to  strike  it  fully.  YYhen- 
ever  a  warm  day  comes,  usually  about  once  or  twice  a  month, 
the  bees  are  able  to  fly,  void  their  excrements  and  often  rearrange 
their  cluster. 

Heavy  snows  are  not  objectionable,  if  they  do  not  cut  out 
the  ventilation  by  thawing  and  forming  ice  about  the  openings. 
We  usually  see  that  the  snow  is  piled  freely  behind  the  hives, 


DADANT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING  105 

with  an  open  entrance  when  a  thaw  comes.  Many  people  object 
to  letting  the  bees  have  a  flight  in  snow  time.  It  is  true  that 
many  get  lost  on  the  snow,  unless  the  weather  is  quite  warm. 
But  we  have  always  noticed  that  the  hives  whose  bees  get  the 
freest  flight  in  snow  time,  turn  out  as  good  as  the  best. 

We  never  disturb  them,  for  any  purpose  whatever,  during 
cold  weather.  Even  if  we  wish  to  pile  the  snow  on  the  north 
side  of  the  hives,  we  go  at  it  very  cautiously,  so  as  not  to  awaken 
them,  as  the  few  bees  that  would  leave  the  cluster  might  be 
chilled  and  lost. 

Many  people  believe  in  what  is  called  "sealed  covers"  over 
the  brood  combs.  We  don't.  We  tried  this  to  our  heart's  con- 
tent. During  the  winter  of  1884-5,  one  of  the  hardest  that  we 
ever  saw,  every  colony  which  had  absolutely  sealed  covers  over 
the  cluster,  was  pitifully  soaked  by  the  melting  of  the  ice  which 
formed  from  the  bees'  respiration.  Wherever  the  bees  had  covers 
in  which  the  moisture  could  escape  slowly  through  the  absorbents 
in  the  cap  or  cover,  the  colony  wintered  in  much  better  condition. 

This  test  was  made  by  us  accidentally.  We  had  on  the 
hives,  right  over  the  top  of  the  frames,  oil  cloths  some  of  which 
were  more  or  less  damaged  by  the  gnawing  of  the  bees.  This  was 
neglect  on  our  part.  But  as  it  happened,  we  found  the  neglect 
to  have  been  beneficial.  For  wherever  the  oil  cloth  was  perfect, 
the  upper  escape  of  moisture  was  prevented.  The  moisture  settled 
over  and  around  the  bees,  congealed  there,  to  thaw  out  and  soak 
them  as  soon  as  the  weather  moderated.  In  the  hives  where  the 
oil  cloth  was  more  or  less  damaged,  the  moisture  escaped  among 
the  leaves  of  the  upper  story,  the  bees  remained  dry  and  condi- 
tions were  much  more  satisfactory.  Thus,  the  poorer  the  "sealed 
cover"  the  better  the  success. 

Let  it  not  be  understood  that  we  want  the  bees  to  have 
an  open  super  above  their  combs.  No,  we  try  to  have  for  them 
what  we  want  for  ourselves  in  a  cold  winter  night,  a  warm,  wool- 
ly, moisture-absorbing  cover,  that  will  at  the  same  time  retain 
the  heat.  We  have  no  use,  either  for  ourselves  or  our  bees,  for 
an  impermeable  cover  that  will  confine  moisture  near  the  body. 

We  do  not  urge  the  adoption  of  the  above  system  of  winter- 


106  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPIXC 

ing  by  any  one.  In  wintering,  perhaps  more  than  in  any  other 
part  of  the  management  of  the  apiary,  much  depends  upon  loca- 
tion.   Let  each  man  judge  of  this  for  himself. 

Outer  winter  cases  of  different  models  have  been  recom- 
mended. Some  are  made  to  contain  4  colonies;  others  3,  others 
still  only  one.  If  our  opinion  is  desired,  we  gladly  recommend 
the  2-colony  winter  case  which  does  not  require  the  moving  of 
the  hives  of  bees  for  winter.  Two  hives  may  be  kept  all  summer 
in  close  proximity  to  each  other;  so  that  they  may  be  incased 
together  without  trouble.  Whenever  we  move  any  hives  of  bees 
for  winter,  we  cause  more  or  less  of  what  is  called  "drifting." 
Drifting  is  the  loss  of  direction  by  some  of  the  bees,  because 
of  a  disturbance.  Whenever  some  of  the  colonies  are  moved, 
there  is  drifting.  The  strongest  colonies  then  gain  the  greater 
number  of  the  drifting  bees,  because  they  make  a  greater  call, 
a  more  discernible  noise,  which  draws  the  lost  bees.  So  the  weak 
colonies  are  weakened  and  the  strong  colonies  strengthened 
by  the  "drifting."  Very  expert  beekeepers,  with  large  practice 
in  the  use  of  the  packing  cases,  have  acknowledged  to  us  that 
drifting  was  one  of  the  main  drawbacks  of  that  method. 

If  the  packing  of  colonies,  singly,  in  thick  packing  boxes, 
in  a  way  that  they  could  not  at  all  feel  the  cold  of  winter,  was 
not  so  expensive,  it  would  be  the  ideal  way  of  wintering  bees, 
even  in  very  cold  regions.  We  have  not  adopted  this  method 
because  of  the  great  expense  it  entails.  Our  method  has  been 
sufficient  and  although  we  have  lost  heavily  in  a  few  abnormal 
winters,  we  succeed  quite  regularly.  Our  losses  are  not  over 
4  or  5  per  cent,  one  year  with  another. 


CHAPTER  13 
Diseases  of  Bees 

If  any  one  had  asked  us,  20  years  ago,  how  much  trouble 
might  be  expected  from  bee  diseases,  we  should  have  probably 
shrugged  our  shoulders  and  answered  that  they  were  very  in- 
significant and  hardly  worthy  of  notice.  For  40  odd  years  after 
we  began  beekeeping,  the  only  disease  we  saw  in  the  apiary  was 
diarrhea,  also  called  dysentery,  from  which  the  bees  suffer  more 
or  less  after  a  protracted  winter,  especially  when  their  food  is 
not  of  the  best.  Spring  dwindling,  which  is  a  result  of  this  dis- 
eased condition,  is  of  importance  only  in  rare  seasons  and  late 
springs.  There  is  less  of  it  with  strong  colonies  than  with  small 
hives. 

Foulbrood,  in  either  of  its  two  different  forms,  was  entirely 
unknown  to  us.  In  1903,  the  writer  had  to  go  as  far  as  Colorado 
to  be  able  to  see  some  rare  samples  of  it,  rare  because  the  bee- 
keepers who  had  it  in  their  apiaries  kept  it  under  control  by 
constant  fight. 

It  was  not  until  the  spring  of  1908  that  we  found  the  disease 
among  our  own  bees.  We  had  been  feeding  them  some  very  fine 
western  honey,  which  we  had  on  hand,  so  as  to  avoid  buying 
sugar,  thinking  that  the  bees  would  return  that  honey  with 
ample  interest  in  a  very  few  days.  Whether  this  was  the  cause, 
or  whether  the  American  foulbrood  which  had  been  noticed 
in  many  parts  of  Illinois  had  just  reached  us  in  some  other  way, 
we  found  it  very  much  scattered  among  our  bees,  although  none 
of  the  colonies  had  more  than  a  few  cells  of  it. 

We  did  not  hesitate  in  treating  the  bees.  We  transferred 
every  colony  by  the  method  recommended  in  text  books  of  the 
most  modern  date.    We  will  give  the  method  in  a  few  words. 

We  go  to  the  first  colony,  remove  it  from  its  stand  and  put 
upon  that  stand  a  clean  empty  hive  with  frames  containing 
only  a  few  starters  of  foundation.  All  the  bees  and  the  queen 
are  shaken  into  it  and  treated  just  like  a  natural  swarm.  The 
contents  of  the  hive  are  removed,  the  brood  is  burned,  the  balance 
of  the  combs  rendered  into  wax,  the  honey  being  heated  for 

107 


108  DADAXT     SYSTEM     OF     BEEKEEPING 

at  least  a  half  hour  to  the  boiling  point  of  water.  When  the 
hive  has  been  emptied,  it  is  singed  with  the  flame  of  a  tinner's 
gasoline  torch  and,  after  supplying  it  with  frames,  it  is  then 
ready  for  the  transfer  of  the  next  colony.  This  work  succeeds 
best  when  it  is  done,  as  we  did  it,  just  at  the  opening  of  the  honey 
harvest,  and  with  the  greatest  care. 

After  48  hours,  the  bees  are  again  shaken  onto  full  sheets  of 
foundation,  or  on  combs  from  healthy  colonies  if  such  may  be 
secured.  This  method  is  called  the  "starvation  method."  By 
this  is  meant  that  the  bees  are  deprived  of  their  combs  and  placed 
where  they  must  build  combs.  So  they  consume  all  the  honey 
in  their  honey  sacks,  producing  wax.  This  method  was  entirely 
successful  on  the  disease  which  is  called  "American  foulbrood." 
All  the  text  books  describe  it.  But  we  might  as  well  give  a  short 
description  of  it  here. 

In  American  foulbrood,  caused  by  bacterium  named  "Bacil- 
lus larvae,"  which  was  discovered  and  named  by  Dr.  G.  F.  White 
of  Washington,  the  unhatched  bee  dies  just  about  the  time  when 
it  is  sealed  in  its  cell  by  the  workers.  Its  body  decays,  turns  to 
a  brown  coffee  color,  has  the  odor  of  joiner's  glue,  and  when  a 
toothpick  is  inserted  into  it,  it  strings  out,  like  so  much  liquid 
rubber,  to  the  length  of  2  or  3  inches.  These  3  symptoms,  whin 
together,  indicate  positively  the  existence  of  American  foul- 
brood . 

We  succeeded  fully  in  doing  away  with  the  disease  and 
afterwards  harvested  the  largest  crops  that  we  ever  secured. 
But  since  the  disease  is  in  existence  in  the  country,  we  find  it 
necessary  to  be  constantly  on  the  alert  and  treat,  without  delay, 
any  colony  in  which  it  is  found,  even  if  only  a  few  larvae  are 
diseased. 

Neighbors  of  ours,  who  made  light  of  the  disease  when 
it  first  appeared,  saw  their  colonies  absolutely  ruined  in  a  very 
short  time.  Two  or  three  men  near  us  quit  the  bee  business 
entirely,  from  discouragement.  Yet  beekeeping  was  never  so 
profitable  as  it  has  been  since  it  requires  greater  vigilance  than 
formerly. 

We  also  had  a  fight  with  European  foulbrood    in  one  of  our 


DADANT   SYSTEM   OF   BEEKEEPING 


109 


1 

; 

■k                          1 

*2       I 

'B      »,     f 

m    - 

"^(  **5*4 

rat*  ■«! 

Fig.  57.    Gas  torch  for  singeing  hives  that  have  contained  foulbrood 


apiaries.  This  mysterious  disease,  caused,  according  to  Dr.  White, 
by  a  bacterium  which  he  named  "Bacillus  pluton,"  attacks  the 
bee  larva  when  it  is  small  and  still  coiled  in  the  cell.  Some  bee- 
keepers say  that  it  has  a  very  disagreeable  odor.  We  have  never 
detected  much  odor,  perhaps  because  we  never  allowed  it  to 
develop  to  a  dangerous  point.  We  found  that  the  best  remedy 
for  it  is  that  given  by  Alexander  years  ago  and  tried  with  success 
by  Dr.  C.  C.  Miller,  removal  or  caging  of  the  queen  for  from  one 
to  three  weeks,  during  which  time  the  bees  clean  out  the  disease, 
if  the  colony  be  strong  enough.  Weak  colonies  have  to  be  united. 
Italian  queens  have  proven  safer  than  black  queens  in  producing 
a  progeny  capable  of  coping  with  the  disease. 

Here  we  must  give  extra  warning  to  the  beginner  concerning 
the   possibility   of   "robbing"   when   there   is   foulbrood   in   the 


110  DADAXT    SYSTEM    OF   BEEKEEPING 

apiary.  No  combs  should  be  exposed,  no  honey  allowed  to  be 
robbed,  no  bees  permitted  to  enter  other  hives,  for  in  each  of 
those  instances  there  is  danger  of  transmitting  the  disease.  Thus 
foulbrood  should  be  treated  at  the  beginning  of  a  honey  crop. 
If  we  find  ourselves  compelled  to  treat  it  at  other  times,  it  must 
be  done  when  the  bees  are  quiet,  when  there  are  no  robbers  about. 

When  American  foulbrood  is  treated  properly,  with  the 
greatest  care,  there  is  but  little  danger  of  its  reappearance 
except  from  outside  of  the  apiary.  Not  so  with  European  foul- 
brood ;  for  it  seems  to  reappear  mysteriously. 

We  also  met  with  "sacbrood,"  a  disease  of  the  larvae  in 
which  they  die  and  dry  up,  so  that  they  may  be  shaken  out  of 
the  cell.  This  usually  disappears  of  its  own  accord,  when  the 
good  season  comes.    It  may  be  due  to  faulty  queens. 

We  no  longer  fear  bee  diseases,  though  they  are  unpleasant 
to  meet.  Vigilance  is  necessary,  it  is  true,  but  in  nothing  can 
we  expect  to  reap  a  reward  without  labor.  It  is  quite  probable 
that  the  time  will  come  again  when  the  foulbroods  will  be  as 
rare  as  they  were  50  years  ago.  We  read  in  the  text  books  of 
the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  that  some  of  the  leading 
scientific  beekeepers,  such  as  Dzierzon  and  Berlepsch,  had  their 
apiaries  well  nigh  destroyed  by  the  diseases  before  they  found 
methods  of  cure.  Earlier  still,  Schirach,  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, discovered  that  the  cure  of  American  foulbrood  was  to 
be  found  in  depriving  the  bees  of  all  honey  and  compelling  them 
to  use  that  which  was  contained  in  their  stomachs,  because  honey 
is  the  most  active  transmitter  of  what  is  called  "American  foul- 
brood." 

There  is  a  very  destructive  disease  of  the  adult  bees  called 
Isle-of-Wight  disease,  in  the  British  Isles.  But  traces  of  a  similar 
disease  have  done  very  little  harm  in  this  country.  However, 
a  disease  called  paralysis,  vertigo,  May  disease,  etc/,  appears 
from  time  to  time  in  different  parts  of  the  world.  We  have  seen 
it,  but  only  on  a  very  limited  scale,  and  it  usually  disappears 
with  the  beginning  of  the  honey  crop. 

For  a  more  thorough  description  of  all  the  bee  diseases  we 
refer  the  reader  to  our  larger  work  "The  Hive  &  Honey  Bee." 


DADANT   SYSTEM   OF   BEEKEEPING  111 

But  let  us  give  one  warning:  Do  not  feed  to  your  bees  unknown 
honey,  no  matter  how  fine  it  may  be.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
honey  may  be  entirely  healthy  for  human  beings  and  yet  contain 
enough  of  the  bacilli  of  foulbrood  to  contaminate  any  colony 
to  which  it  is  fed.  Pay  no  attention  to  the  men  who  tell  you  that 
sugar  is  not  good  for  bees.  If  you  have  to  feed  the  bees  and  have 
none  of  the  honey  of  your  own  production,  better  give  them 
syrup  made  of  the  very  best  sugar.  There  will  be  no  danger  of 
disease 


CHAPTER  14 
Enemies  of  Bees 

We  have  found  no  enemies  of  bees  quite  so  bad  as  our  own 
selves,  when  we  are  neglectful  or  too  avaricious.  We  have  occa- 
sionally removed  too  much  honey,  to  our  sorrow  later. 

The  moths  have  never  done  much  harm  in  our  apiaries, 
because  we  promptly  accepted  Mr.  Langstroth's  statement  that 
there  is  no  more  danger  of  a  healthy  colony  of  bees  being  de- 
stroyed by  the  moths  than  there  is  of  a  healthy  cow  being  killed 
by  carrion  flies;  although  a  queenless  colony  will  be  just  as 
readily  riddled  by  the  maggots  of  the  moth  as  the  body  of  a 
dead  cow  will  be  consumed  by  the  maggots  of  carrion. 

We  keep  our  empty  combs  from  year  to  year,  during  the 
winter  in  a  cold  honey  house,  where  the  thermometer  often  goes 
down  to  zero  F.  (—18°  C).  Neither  larvae,  eggs  nor  moths  can 
withstand  such  low  temperatures.  In  the  summer,  if  the  honey 
house  is  kept  well  closed,  there  is  still  no  danger.  But,  in  the 
summer,  we  usually  have  all  our  combs  in  use  where  the  bees 
care  for  them  better  than  we  could.  Hives  in  which  the  bees 
have  died  at  the  opening  of  spring  are  usually  the  most  fertile 
breeders  of  moths,  for  moth  worms  often  winter  in  out-of-the-way 
corners,  kept  alive  by  the  warmth  of  the  bees.  Wrere  it  not  for 
such  accidental  wintering  of  the  live  grub,  moths  would  become 
well  nigh  exterminated  in  these  northern  countries.  Such  combs 
should  be  treated  several  times  during  the  spring  and  summer 
months  and  it  is  better  to  keep  them  out  of  the  bee  house.  How- 
ever, if  the  treatment  is  thorough,  by  burning  a  quantity  of 
brimstone  in  an  earthen  dish,  with  the  supers  and  combs  piled 
in  broken  tiers,  so  as  to  allow  free  circulation  of  the  gas  produced, 
the  quantity  of  brimstone  that  will  kill  the  flies  in  the  room  will 
also  kill  the  moths.  The  quantity  to  be  used  must  depend  upon 
the  size  of  the  room  and  its  greater  or  less  ability  to  retain  the 
fumes. 

We  also  use  carbon-bisulphide,  poured  upon  a  rag  and  laid 
at  the  top  of  a  pile  of  supers,  closing  the  pile  carefully  to  allow 
the  evaporating  gas  to  penetrate  in  all  the  crevices.    Care  must 

113 


114 


DADAXT    SYSTEM    OF   BEEKEEPING 


be  taken  not  to  bring  a  flame  near,  as  this  gas  ignites  and 
explodes. 

Other  enemies  of  bees  are  too  insignificant  to  find  a  place 
in  this  short  treatise. 

We  will  here  give  a  few  rules  that  we  consider  important, 
in  our  climate  at  least: 

We  never  face  colonies  northward,  as  the  bees  often  get 
chilled  near  the  entrance  to  their  home  in  unpleasant  weather. 

We  never  move  colonies  of  bees,  even  a  few  inches,  with- 
out placing  a  slanting  board  in  front  of  the  hive,  to  cause  them 
to  notice  the  change  of  location. 

We  never  disturb  colonies  of  bees  in  cold  weather. 


Fig.  58.    Low,  moist,  rich  bottom  land  that  is  good  for  honey  production 


We  never  try  to  winter  a  colony  that  has  less  than  6  combs. 
Such  a  colony  might  be  wintered  in  the  cellar,  if  it  has  sufficient 
stores.   Smaller  colonies  are  united. 

W^e  never  close  colonies  to  keep  them  from  flying  because 
of  snow  or  rain  or  other  reasons,  except  to  transport  them.  We 
consider  that  enough  bees  worry  themselves  to  death  to  make 


DADANT   SYSTEM   OF   BEEKEEPING  115 

up  for  those  that  would  leave  and  get  lost  in  the  cold  or  in  the 
rain. 

We  never  use  drone  traps,  moth  traps,  separators,  queen 
excluders,  entrance  guards,  etc.  Separators  are  useful  in  comb- 
honey  production,  but  not  with  our  system. 

We  never  cut  our  queens'  wings.  We  do  not  disapprove 
of  the  practice,  but  we  do  not  find  it  necessary  in  our  system. 

Conclusion 

In  our  description  of  the  Dadant  System  of  beekeeping 
we  do  not  wrish  to  be  understood  as  advising  the  average  bee- 
keeper to  change  from  any  system  that  he  now  uses.  There  are 
tens  of  thousands  of  beekeepers  using  8-frame  Langstroth  hives, 
10-frame  hives  of  the  same  depth,  and  even  other  patterns,  with 
good  success.  Our  own  success,  for  more  than  a  half  century,  has 
caused  inquiry  as  to  our  methods.  That  inquiry  led  to  the  pub- 
lication of  this  work.  WTe  have  no  apology  to  make,  but  neither 
do  we  urge  the  following  of  our  system  nor  the  adoption  of  our 
hive.  The  only  thing  which  we  consider  absolutely  indispensable 
in  modern  beekeeping  is  the  use  of  a  movable-frame  hive  of 
sufficient  capacity  for  the  prolificness  of  the  queens.  But  there 
is  no  doubt  in  our  mind  that  a  maximum  crop  of  extracted  honey, 
can  be  secured  by  the  Dadant  system  with  less  manipulation 
than  with  any  other  system  yet  made  known.  More  bees  may 
be  kept,  more  honey  produced  with  the  same  hours  of  labor. 
We  have  given  our  reasons  for  using  this  method.  That  is  enough. 
Let  the  reader  decide  for  himself  as  to  his  course. 


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REVISED   BY  DADANT 

This  book,  originally  written  by  Rev.  L.  L.  Langstroth, 
the  inventor  of  the  movable  frame  hive,  has  been  revised 
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FIRST  LESSONS 
IN  BEEKEEPING 


C   r   DADA.MT 


First  Lessons  in  Beekeeping 

BY  C.  P.  DADANT 

The  senior  editor  of  the  American 
Bee  Journal,  who  is  the  author  of  this 
book,  has  spent  nearly  all  his  life  in 
a  beekeeping  atmosphere.  His  father, 
the  late  Charles  Dadant.  was  an  in- 
vestigator who  became  well  known 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  As  a 
young  man,  the  author  of  this  book 
was  associated  with  his  father  in 
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the  many  experiments  which  he  con- 
ducted in  his  efforts  to  make  bee- 
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Practical  Queen  Rearing 

BY  FRANK  C.  PELLETT 

In  preparation  for  this  book  Mr.  Pel- 
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The  methods  of  the  older  queen- 
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The  first  book  in   the   English  language  on   the   subject   of 
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A  knowledge  of  sources  of  nectar  is 
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A  Thousand  Answers  to  Beekeeping 
Questions 

BY  DR.  C.  C.  MILLER 

For  over  25  years  Doctor  Miller  has  answered  questions 
for  beginners  and  veterans  alike  through  the  columns  of  the 
American  Bee  Journal.  More  than 
10,000  of  these  questions  have  been 
answered  in  this  manner.  These  have 
been  sifted  and  more  than  1,000  of 
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OUTAPIARIES 

BY  M.  G.  DADANT 

A  clear  and  concise  explanation  of  the  requirements  for 
proper  placing,  arranging  and  managing  of  outapianes. 
Too  many  beekeepers  expand  into  outapiary  beekeeping 
without  fundamental  knowledge  of  its  requirements  The 
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